Tag: jazz summer nyc

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Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly.

If you’re leaving your hood, don’t get stuck waiting for a train that never comes, make sure you check the MTA delays and out-of-service page for service cancellations and malfunctions, considering how unreliable the subway is at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you discovered here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar:

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! sug don, email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of tropical bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Mondays at 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays starting at around 10:45 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically woke, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

Tuesdays at 7:30 PM the chamelonic, playful, sometimes irresistibly cartoonish Daniel Bennett Group play jazz outside the box at the third floor bar at the Residence Inn, 1033 6th Ave at 39th St, free

Most Thursdays at 8:30, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Three Saturdays in September: 9/7, 9/14 and 9/28 at 4 PM free concerts at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Three Sundays in September: 9/1, 9/15 and 9/29 Greg Lewis’ brilliant, fearlessly political Organ Monk Trio at Bar Lunatico at 1 PM for brunch. He’s also at Columbus Park – Cadman Plaza East and Johnson St in downtown Brooklyn – at noon on 9/27

Sundays at 5 PM in September at Barbes, multistylistic, lyrical, improvisational cellist Rufus Cappodocia leads a series of ensembles

Most Sundays at 5:15 PM starting in late September, a free recital on the amazing, powerful, dynamic new organ at St. Thomas Church at 5th Ave and 53rd St. featuring some of the world’s greatest organists. The space is magnificent and the music usually is too. Right now the church fathers are programming pretty much everybody who used to work here and play the mighty old Aeolian-Skinner organ that finally had to be replaced. Check the concert calendar for details.

Sundays at 8 PM purist guitarist Peter Mazza – who gets the thumbs up from bop-era legend Gene Bertoncini – leads a series of groups at the Bar Next Door

Sundays at 9:30 PM paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel leads his band at Barbes – check the club calendar just to make sure.

9/3, 7 PM bass-baritone John Taylor Ward “ventures into rare worlds of medieval and folk music with Cantata Profana‘s artistic director Jacob Ashworth on violins and vielles, and special guests Nina Stern on every kind of recorder and wind instrument you can imagine, and Paul Morton on lutes, guitars, and banjo” at Joe’s Pub, $15

9/3-8, 8:30/10 PM wildly popular classic jazz pianist Bill Charlap leads his trio at the Vanguard, $35. Then they’re back again 9/10-15. He’s also doing a very rare free show with veteran singer Sandy Stewart at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex on 9/4 at 1 PM

9/5, 7:30/9:30 PM lyrical, erudite, blues-infused tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger plays the album release show for his new one Preminger Plays Preminger, inspired by the films of his uncle Otto, with a killer quartet including Jason Moran on piano at the Jazz Standard, $30

9/5, 9 PM Certain General guitarslinger Phil Gammage and band play the album release show for their new one at 11th St. Bar. 9/7 he’s at Shrine at 9 andat Cowgirl Seahorse in the South St. Seaport at 7 on 9/30

9/6, 7 PM a mass improvisation workshop/concert with the Hugh Ragin Creative Orchestra at the New School, Stiefel Hall, 4th Floor, 55 West 13th St, $15, free for students

9/6, 7:30 PM Ensemble Ipse perform a workshop version of Max Giteck Duykers’ new opera Both Eyes Open, about the aftereffects of WWII imprisonment on Japanese-Americans. “Seen through the eyes of a Japanese-American farmer’s wife’s ghost, and his resurrected, once buried, zen Buddhist daruma doll, the farmer returns alone after the war to his darkened fields having lost his family and livelihood, struggling to find his path again. Singers Kelvin Chan, Kalean Ung, and John Duykers star in this piece that revisits and illuminates this pivotal period of U.S. history and its divergent perspectives, and sheds light on the current state of xenophobia and polarizing socio-political beliefs,” at Shapeshifter Lab, $20/$10 stud/srs

9/6-7, 8:30 PM ($15), repeating 9/8, 4 PM, 9/11-14 and 9/17-21 at 8:30 PM ($25) Kamala Sankaram’s new experimental opera Looking at You, “driven by a score for three saxophones, piano, and electronics, a story of high-tech espionage and romance fusing Edward Snowden and Casablanca. Reflecting the audience’s online identity in real time, Looking at You raises urgent questions surrounding online communication, privacy, and the reinvention of capitalism in the age of public data,” at HERE, 145 Sixth Ave. south of Spring, past the park on the west side of the street

9/6, 8 PM dark cabaret legend Sanda Weigl and her trio followed at 10 by Pangari & the Socialites playing classic ska and rocksteady – most of it from the 60s Skatalites catalog – at Barbes

9/7, 7 PM music for brass and electronics by Sarah Belle Reid, with special guests Nate Wooley & the Mannes brass studio at the New School, Stiefel Hall, 4th Floor, 55 West 13th St, $15, free for students

9/7, 7:30 PM rapturous Indian carnatic singer Mitali Banerjee Bhawmik with harmonium and tabla at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

9/9, 9:30 PM “the Slippery Fish pay tribute to the Mexican pedal steel master Tõno Quirazco, who in the 1960’s combined the new sound of ska music out of Jamaica with country twang to invent a twist on the Caribbean sound.,” at Barbes

9/10. 6 PM Renee Neufville & ipanist Sullivan Fortner play a Roy Hargrove tribute in conjunction with the new photo exhibit at the Jazz Gallery, free, get there on time

9/10, 6 PM pianist Stephen Gosling plays an all John Zorn program at the Miller Theatre, free

9/10, 6 PM wryly funny Colorado newgrass band the Stillhouse Junkies at the small room at the Rockwood

9/11, 8:45 AM (in the morning)choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi’s Table of Silence tribute to 9/11, led by Buglisi Dance Theatre joined by 150+ dancers and chamber ensemble, ending precisely at 8:46 AM to commemorate when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. Audiences are invited to join the dancers at that time in lifting their arms upward for one minute, on the plaza at Lincoln Center

9/11, 7 PM purposeful postbop jazz guitarist Amanda Monaco plays the album release show for her new klezmer jazz album at Drom, $10 adv tix rec

9/11, 7 and 8:30 PM a 9/11 memorial concert with works by Bach, Barber, Bottoms, Chopin, and others played by Mark Peskanov, violin, Rita Sloan, piano; David Bottoms, piano and others at Bargemusic, free, early arrival a must

9/11, 7/10 PM lyrical latin jazz pianist Manuel Valera and his quartet play an Ernesto Lecuuona tribute at Birdland, $20 at the bar

9/11, 8 PM smartly tuneful oldschool soul/psych-pop songwriter Mimi Oz followed eventually at 11 by guitarslinger Mallory Feuer’s fiery band the Grasping Straws – sort of a mashup of Patti Smith and Hole’s first album – at Muchmore’s

9/12, 6 PM not a music event but very cool: “Over a period of 6 years beginning in 2011, Jon Crispin photographed over 400 suitcases that were brought to the Willard Psychiatric Center in Willard, NY by patients who were being admitted to the facility. Many of the owners of the cases lived at Willard most of their adult lives, and are buried in the cemetery across the road from the institution. The collection is housed at The New York State Museum and dates from between 1910 and 1965, is completely unique and is an amazing reflection of the lives of the patients. Jon’s presentation will cover his previous documentation of abandoned 19th Century New York State Asylums as well as his work with the suitcases,” at the New School 12th floor skyroom at w W 13th St.

9/12, 8:30 PM the New Thread Saxophone Quartet play the album release for their debut record featuring works by James Ilgenfritz, Len Tetta, Jude Thomas, and Amy Beth Kirsten at the Tenri Institute, $10 for the show, $20 for show and cd

9/13, 7 PM pianist Lara Downes plays the album release show for her new new one featuring women composers Clara Schumann, Florence Price, Meredith Monk, Nina Simone, Paola Prestini, Joni Mitchell, and more with a stellar cast – Bridget Kibbey, harp; Magos Herrera, vocals; Simone Dinnerstein, piano – at National Sawdust, $35 in advance includes a cd, or $25 without one

9/13, 8:30 PM surf rock night, in reverse order at the Gutter: the Vivisectors – who make macabre surf rock out of old Soviet prison songs – 60s mod Britrock band the Skates, the eclectically cinematic Cameramen, and the similarly cinematic, more dramatic TarantinosNYC. $7

9/13, 9 PM lively oldtimey swing road warriors the Bumper Jacksons play the album release show for their new live one at the Jalopy, $15

9/14, 4:30 PM elegantly angst-fueled, individualistic torchsong/parlor pop piano chanteuse Jeanne Marie Boes followed at 5:30 by Melissa Gordon of Melissa & the Mannequins, one of the best purist janglerock songwriters in NYC, at LIC ,Bar. Gordon is also leading a Dead cover band there on 9/25 at 9; might be worth taking a chance on that too.

9/15, 3 PM clarinetist Graeme Johnson leads a wind and horn sextet playing works by Weber, Mozart, Crusell and Beethoven at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, sugg don

9/15, 7 PM intriguing, Bartokian flute/violin/bass ensemble the Bateira Trio followed by cinematic, lyrical postbop jazz with the Mark Wade Trio at the National Opera Center, 330 7th Ave, 7th Fl, $20. Wade is also at Flushing Town Hall on 9/21 at 2:30 PM for $10

9/19,, 7:30 PM this era’s most spellbinding oldschool country singer, Laura Cantrell on the roof of the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St., Gowanus, free followed by the documentary film American Factory

9/20, 8 PM drummer Tomas Fujiwara with a typically brilliant edgy lineup: Patricia Brennan on vibraphone, and Tomeka Reid on cello playing the release show for their new suite at Roulette, $18 av tix rec

9/20, 8:30 PM bassist/singer Georgia Weber & the Sleeved Hearts play the album release show for her restless, alternately sparkling and acidic blend of jazz and abstract guitar rock at the basement room at the Rockwood, $12

9/21, 6 PM amazing, psychedelic instrumentalists Sandcatchers – who blend cinematic, pastoral Americana and Middle Eastern themes – followed at 6 by accordion genius Shoko Nagai ’s haunting, increasingly loud and psychedelic Tokala Silk Road/klezmer mashup project and then at 10 by Frankie Sunswept and the Sunwrays – Rachel Housle on drums, Sean Cronin on bass, Kyle Morgan on vocals and lead guitar, and Frankie Sunswept on vocals, guitar and piano playing psychedelic soul and surf music at Barbes.Sandcatchers are also here on 9/28 at 6 also.

9/21, 7 PM lustrously eclectic jazz chanteuse Svetlana (of Svetlana & the Delancey 5) sings the album release show for her cinematic new one at Joe’s Pub, $20

9/21, 8 PM wry, Mose Allison-inspired folksinger Mike Glick followed by Scott Cook – who shifts from traditional front-porch fare to populist originals – at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away

9/21, 9ish punchy noiserockers Big Bliss and

9/21, 9ish punchy noiserockers Big Bliss and Monograms – who do as good a mid-80s Cure impression as any band alive – at the Broadway, the old Gateway space at 1272 Broadway in Bushwick, J to Gates Ave, $tba

9/23, 8 PM dub-inspired psychedelic cumbia/tropicalia band Combo Lula open for Peruvian Amazon psychedelic cumbia legends Los Wembler’s de Iquitos playing the album release show for their new one at the Poisson Rouge, $20 adv tix rec

9/27, 7 PM the North American debut of the Gurdjieff Ensemble, an eleven-piece ensemble who play authentic arrangements of music by Gurdjieff and Komitas on Armenian traditional instruments, joined by pianist Lusine Grigoryan at Symphony Space, $35

9/29, starting at around noon the Atlantic Antic street fair on Atlantic Ave from Hicks St. all the way to 4th Ave. with many bands playing various spots. At noon the NY Arabic Orchestra plays close to Sahadi’s;

9/29, 9 PM guitarslinger Mallory Feuer’s fiery band the Grasping Straws and stately, ominous female-fronted tropically-tinged psychedelic/artrock band Camp St. Helene playing the album release show for their new one at C’Mon Everybody, $10

10/7. 6 PM not music-related but scary/important: the opening of photographer Alice Miceli’s Projeto Chernobyl at the Americas Society. “The artist developed a method of image making to document the enduring effects of the Soviet nuclear plant explosion of April 26, 1986. Though gamma radiation continues to be present and to cause health problems and deaths in the area, it is invisible to the naked eye and to traditional methods of photography that have been used to document the region’s ruins. Miceli made this contamination visible via direct contact between the radiation and film, which was exposed in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for months at a time.”

11/6, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6, TAK Ensemble play works by Ashkan Behzadi ,Erin Gee, Taylor Brook , Tyshawn Sorey and David Bird at the Miller Theatre, free

11/8, 8 PM the world’s darkest, slinkiest, most blackly funny crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy play the album release show for their danceably creepy new one Dear Trouble at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St. in Gowanus with special guests Steven Bernstein on trumpet, Slavic Soul Party’s Peter Hess on saxes and Miramar’s Farfisa sorceress Marlysse Rose Simmons, $20

12/10, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6, badass harp virtuoso Bridget Kibbey plays works by Bach, Gershwin, Albeniz and Tschaikovsky at the Miller Theatre, free

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. Believe it or not, some of this year’s free summer concert series schedules are still being tweaked – you’ll see the good stuff on this page.

If you’re leaving your hood, don’t get stuck waiting for a train that never comes, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how unreliable the subway is at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar:

August 5 through 11 the annual Drive East Festival of Indian music and classical arts at the Mezzanine Theatre, 502 W 53rd St, features both iconic artists seldom heard outside India as well as cutting-edge new talent. Individual concert listings are in the calendar below; tickets are relatively cheap (no more than $30, often less), and the level of talent is breathtaking. Very highly recommended.

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! sug don, email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of tropical bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Mondays at 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays starting at around 10:45 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically woke, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

Tuesdays at 7:30 PM the chamelonic, playful, sometimes irresistibly cartoonish Daniel Bennett Group play jazz outside the box at the bar at the Residence Inn, 1033 6th Ave at 39th St, free

Most Thursdays at 8:30, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Saturdays in August at 6 PM mesmerizing oudist Brian Prunka plays with a series of Middle Eastern groups at Barbes

Sundays at 9:30 PM paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel leads his band at Barbes – check the club calendar just to make sure.

8/1, 8 PM dark, savagely brilliant guitarist Ava Mendoza in a rare solo show at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St., Gowanus, $15 cash only at the door, space limited, RSVP to reserve your ticket, She says the punk band on after her are fun too

8/2, 8 PM a live performance of new Christopher Cerrone song cycles by soprano Lindsay Kesselman, vocalist Theo Bleckmann, and a chamber choir, accompanied by Wild Up under Christopher Rountree at Arete Gallery, $20 includes copy of the new cd

8/2, 9:45 PM perennially entertaining first wave-style punks the Car Bomb Parade play the album release show for their new one, followed by female-fronted screamers Sister Munch and the evern louder, food-fixated But, Pyrite at the Gutter, $10

8/3, 2 PM ish brass band madness, outdoors: the L Train Brass Band (which apparently IS running this weekend, unlike its namesake), Brass Queens, Brooklyn’s original punk Balkan horn group Hungry March Band, and eclectic quartet Trumpet Marmalade at Good Life Garden, 50 Goodwin Pl, (off Grove; J to Gates Ave) in Bushwick, sug don. “The garden festivities will conclude with a NOLA-flavored second line processional to Queens Brewery for the official afterparty.”

8/3, 6 PM 70s soul nostalgia with what’s left of the Stylistics, the Manhattans, and Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes (minus the late great Philly soul bandleader) at the Amphitheatre at Coney Island, free, be aware that this is a corporate venue and security is extremely hostile

8/3, 7 PM rising star sitarist Abhik Mukherjee with Dibyarka Chatterjee on tabla at the Chhandayan Center for Indian Music $16

8/3. 7 PM the Post-Haste Reed Duo play the album release show for their playful, charming new one at Spectrum,

8/3, 8ish legendary, intense former Come bandleader and haunting indie-psych guitarist Thalia Zedek’s E followed by ageless mostly-female CB’s era funk-punk/postrockers the Bush Tetras playing the album release show for their new one at the Mercury, $15

8/3, 8:30 PM Rachel Koblyakov “sets out to explore the various polyphonic and lyrical possibilities of the solo violin. The works chosen are with disregard to the composers’ era or the general categorization of their music, yet each piece favors either a polyphonic or lyrical form.” with works by J.S. Bach, Alfred Schnittke, Marc-André Dalbavie, Orlando Bass, Michael Finnissy, Dai Fujikura, and Matthias Pintscher.at Spectrum, $15

8/6, 6 PM dancers Rasika Kumar,Sahasra Sambamoorthi and Nadhi Thekkek perform their new piece Unfiltered, inspired by the Bharatanatyam tradition, which “explore the everyday moments that eventually lead to the boiling points that cascade into change” with a live score by pyrotechnic vocalist Roopa Mahadevan at the Mezzanine Theatre, 502 W 53rd St, $30

8/6-18, 8:30/10 PM guitar icon Bill Frisell eads his trio with Thomas Morgan on bass and Rudy Royston on drums at the Vanguard, $35. Saxophonist Greg Tardy joins the festivities starting on 8/13. Then Frisell is there through the 25th as part of drummer Andrew Cyrille’s quartet

8/10, 1/3 PM improvisational jazz big band Go: Organic Orchestra & the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play material from their upcoming triple vinyl album in the park on Governors Island. Included on the bill is their new composition In D, a sequel to the Terry Riley classic.

8/10, 4 PM Japanese koto/shamisen virtuoso Yoko Reikano Kimura in a rare US performance at the Center for Remembering and Sharing, $30

8/10, 6 PM reggae acts from across the years, in reverse order at Central Park Summerstage: dancehall king Elephant Man, ex-Black Uhuru singer Junior Reid, Estelle and newschool conscious roots band Raging Fyah at Central Park

8/10,,7 PM Ensemble Nikel play works by Klaus Lang and other contemporary composers at Wagner Park north of Battery Park. 8/14 at 8 they’re at the DiMenna Center playing works by Simon Løffler, Steven Takasugi, Clara Iannotta, Mirela Ivičević and Julien Malaussena for $20/$10 stud/srs

8/11, 1 PM not a music event per se but very cool: Jiva Dance Company perform their apocalyptic Bharatanatyam suite The Four Horsemen: “The stories – a woman shackled to the life of a courtesan (conquest), a woman reminiscing the night she spent with her lover who is at war (war), a mother searching for nourishment for her child in the midst a sandstorm (famine), and finally a woman at the end of her life recalling memories that span youthful joy to hardship and loss (death) – are touchingly timely,” at the Mezzanine Theatre, 502 W 53rd St, $25

8/11, 2:30 PM the rapturous, mighty Navatman Music Collective – this continent’s only Indian carnatic choir, and one of only three in the world – sing their new suite Bridges of Joy at the Mezzanine Theatre, 502 W 53rd St, $25

8/11, 3 PM ish funk-punk-postpunkers the B Boys play the album release show for their new one at Union Pool, free

8/11, 7:30 PM noir Americana siren and Hadestown creator Anais Mitchell opens for a ex-crackhead hanger-on from the 60s who was once in a pioneering janglerock band, at Damrosch Park, get there early because all the old hippies will take the seats

8/11, 830 PM pioneering Afro-punk bass player FeliceRosser of Faith followed by eclectic guitarist Monica Passin of rockabilly/soul band Lil Mo & the Monicats with amazing vocalist/Americana song stylist Drina Seay at the Treehouse at 2A

8/15 8 PM ambitious, perennially tuneful saxophonist Mike McGinnis leads his quartet with Jacob Sacks on piano followed by alto player Jonathan Crompton doing the album release show for his new one with Ingrid Laubrock and Patrick Breiner on tenor sax, plus bassist Adam Hopkins and drummer Kate Gentile at the Owl

8/17, 6 PM one of New York’s most eclectic, interesting oudists, Brian Prunka followed at 8 by eclectic, electric C&W/blues band the Jug Addicts and at 10 by ferocious, creepily enveloping, kinetic psychedelic tropicalia band Yotoco at Barbes

8/18, 6 PM oldschool salsa with Jose “El Canario” Alberto and La Sonora Ponceña at the Coney Island Amphitheatre, free, it’s a pretty small place run by corporate idiots and you’ll need to get there early to get in

8/22, 8:30 PM Wickedly catchy Americana/paisley underground rockers Girls on Grass followed by a kinda whiny Americana act, then deviously fun no wave/post-Velvets rockers Shadow Year and then the similar but more punkish Dares at Union Pool, $12

8/24, 6 PM one of New York’s most eclectic, interesting oudists, Brian Prunka followed at 8 by pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri playing their creepy Transylvanian jazz and at 10 by and at 10 by epic, psychedelic, noir-drenched psycho mambo band Gato Loco at Barbes

8/29, 730 PM the Haitian funk band that started it all, Boukman Eksperyans at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/29, 8 PM 7 PM the Underground Spiritual Ground, a new supergroup and Anbessa Orchestra spinoff exploring the connection between African-American spirituals, Ethiopian and Caribbean music followed at 10 by Quatre Vingt Neuf, who do playfully improvisational versions of hot jazz classics and Little Rascals theme music with a rock rhythm section at Barbes

8/31, 6 PM mesmerizing, intricate, anthemic oudist Brian Prunka and band followed at 8 by accordion genius Shoko Nagai ’s haunting, increasingly loud and psychedelic Tokala Silk Road/klezmer mashup project and at 10 by Rana Santacruz – the Mexican Shane MacGowan, but without the booze if you can imagine that – at Barbes

11/8, 8 PM the world’s darkest, slinkiest, most blackly funny crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy play the album release show for their danceably creepy new one Dear Trouble at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St. in Gowanus with special guests Steven Bernstein on trumpet, Slavic Soul Party’s Peter Hess on saxes and Miramar’s Farfisa sorceress Marlysse Rose Simmons, $20

Daily updates, and a new calendar for August and September coming 8/1 – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. Believe it or not, some of this year’s free summer concert series schedules still haven’t been announced yet – as soon as they are, the good stuff will be on this page.

If you’re leaving your hood, don’t get stuck waiting for a train that never comes, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how unreliable the subway is at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar:

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! Next performance is 7/16, 7 PM : an all-Brahms program with two trios, Op. 40 for Waldhorn, Violin and Piano, then Op 87 for Piano, Violin and Cello with Nancy Garniez – piano; Gregor Kitzis – violin; Dave Eggar – cello; Jacob Garniez – Waldhorn; sug don, email for details/address

7/14-28, 8 PM this year’s International Keyboard Festival featuring inexpensive performances by all kinds of up-and-coming and veteran talent at the Lang Recital Hall, on the 4th floor of the North Building at Hunter College. Most concerts are $10. Too many artists to list: the lineup is here

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of tropical bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Mondays in July at 10 (9 PM on 7/1) at LIC Bar darkly psychedelic circus punks Yula & the Extended Family – sometimes just frontwoman/bassist Yula Beeri and her loop pedals, other times with a parade of special guests

Mondays at 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays starting at around 10:45 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically woke, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

Tuesdays at 9 PM, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Most Thursdays at 8:30, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on three Saturdays: 7/6, 13 and 20 at 4 PM at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Sundays in July, 5 PM wildly diverse multi-string player Joanna Sternberg leads a series of old and newschool jazz, folk and possibly klezmer groups on bass and guitar at Barbes

Sundays in July, 8 PM purist guitarist Peter Mazza – who gets the thumbs up from bop-era legend Gene Bertoncini – leads a series of groups at the Bar Next Door

Sundays at 9:30 PM paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel leads his band at Barbes – check the club calendar just to make sure.

7/3, 7;30 PM the Sisterhood of Swing Seven with Catherine Russell on vocals plus Camille Thurman,saxophone; Emily Asher, trombone;Endea Owens,bass; Shirazette Tinnin, drums; Champian Fulton,piano; and Molly Ryan guitar celebrate the legacy of legendary all-female 30s swing band the Sisterhood of Swing at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/5, 8 PM one of New York’s most eclectic, interesting oudists, Brian Prunka leads one of his excellent projects at Barbes. He killed here last week with his Nashaz Middle Eastern band

7/5, 8:30ish conscious hip-hop artist Leikeli47 followed by Chicago hardcore mc Mick Jenkins – who had the sense to nick a Gil Scott-Heron song for the title of his latest album – at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/6, 3:30 PM Luisa Muhr’s amazing multidisciplinary series Women Between Arts features vocalist/storyteller Crystal Penalosa,,performance artist Jill Guyon and sound artist/instrument inventorThessia Machado at Women Between Arts at the Glass Box Theatre at the New School, $12, no one turned away for lack of funds

7/6, 9:30 PM elegant, sharply lyrical parlor pop stylist Heather Eatman followed eventually at 11:306 by dark gutter blues band Fife & Drom at Freddy’s, Avoid the putrid, whiny band in between at all costs

7/9, 7 PM trombonist Craig Harris plays solo in the Rose Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, free. Presumably this will be a peaceful set.

7/9, 7:30 PM a rare NYC appearance by Brazilian rainforest song chanteuse Elba Ramalho,“The Queen of Forró,” at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/10, 7 PM psychedelic Brazilian band Os Clavelitos at the small room at the Rockwood

7/10, 7:30 PM the mighty, Middle Eastern-tinged Eyal Vilner Big Band with special guest Brianna Thomas burning down the house on vocals at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/11, 6 PM sharply lyrical, seriously woke southwestern gothic/Americana songwriter Tom Shaner at the LIC Landing in Hunter’s Point South Park, 51st Ave and Center Boulevard in LIC, 7 to Vernon-Jackson and walk to the water

7/12, 7:30 PM Maria Muldaur – yeah, her, Midnight at the Oasis – sings a Blue Lu Barker tribute and more at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/13, 3 PM gamelanesque percussion innovator Susie Ibarra leads the DreamTime Ensemble in the performance of her new suite Fragility: A Game of Polyrhythms in front ot Building 10A in the park in the middle of Governors Island, free, $3 roundtrip ferries leave Manhattan on the half hour. Ibarra is also at Issue Project Room on 7/27 at 8 for $20/$15 stud/srs

7/13, 7:30 PM retro swing with the Harlem Renaissance Orchestraplaying their 15th annual tribute to Illinois Jacquet at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/13, 7:30 PM cynical punk glam/powerpop band the Right Offs at the Delancey, $10

7/13, 8 PM the Bright Smoke – imagine a more psychedelic, slower, more lingering, female-fronted Joy Division – at the small room at the Rockwood followed eventually at 1 AM (wee hours of 7/14) by jaggedly jangly rockers the Twenty Sevens . The Bright Smoke are also at Littlefield playing the album release show for their amazing new one on 7/27, time/price tba

7/14 noon the Rockaway Beach Music Festival all down the peninsula, acts tba, not announced yet but a schedule is supposed to be up at some point, Ostensibly a bunch of good surf acts (including one named after a Chicha Libre song) and a bunch of indie posers as well are on the bill

7/19, 8 PM dusky, rustic Brazilian jungle guitar-and-accordion sounds with Regional de NY followed by deliriously fun accordion band Los Mochuelos playing classic Colombian vallenato and oldschool cumbias at Barbess. If there’s any band in town who deserve a Friday night slot it’s these guys.

7/19, 8 PM Natacha Diels premieres her new suite Sad Music for Lonely People, “a series of recent works involving inspirational quotes, messages from another world, and a step-by-step guide to using heavy machinery in healing rituals featuring NYC outdoor noise field recordings,” followed by Michael Morley’s Music for the Never Quartet – played on bowed acoustic guitars – at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs. The program repeats on 7/20 with Ursula Scherrer & composer Michael Schumacher doing a similar found-sound project in place of Dielss

7/20, 7 PM darkly torchy swing band Davina & the Vagabonds at Kingsborough Community College auditorium, 2001 Oriental Boulevard, Manhatttan Beach, Q to Brighton Beach and about a 15 minute walk. They’re at Iridium on 7/24 at 7:30 for

7/25-26, 7:30 PM Hungarian Nights: a Hungarian and Romany-inspired musical by Cheryl E. Kemeny and Mariner Pezza, “ the story of an everlasting love between a 500-year-old Count and his re-incarnated love against a backdrop of gypsy life in the Transylvanian mountains, circa 1888. Featuring a Hungarian folk dance company, the Liget Dance Ensemble, the show includes a cast of up-and-coming young musical artists” at the ARI Theatre, 502 W 53rd St., $30

7/27, 7:30 PM Changing Modes – NYC’s funnest, most unpredictable, sharply lyrical new wave art-rock band – at the Bitter End, $10. Wickedly jangly, tuneful Americana rockers the Sloe Guns play after at around 10 if you can manage to stick around

7/27, 9 PM the Delorean Sisters – who do funny oldtimey acoustic covers of cheesy 80s pop songs and charming all-female oldtimey string band the Queens of Everything at the Jalopy, $10

7/28, starting at noon music and dance from all over the world including but not limited to the Ukrainian Village Voices, Diwas Gurung playing Nepalese tunes, and tar lute player Khurshed Alidodov playing haunting Iranian Parmi music and more at the Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park

7/31, 7 PM not a music event but very NY-centric: a new English translation of Leon Kobrin’s 1912 NYC Yiddish tenement drama Breach of Promise – pretty radical for its time – at YIVO at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St, $15/$10 stud/srs

7/31, 8ish hotshot, funny rockabilly band the Royal Hounds, olschool Warped Tour style punkpopsters the Take and the Old Firm Casuals – sort of the missing link between Social Distortion and early 80s British oi punk bands like GBH – at St. Vitus, $20,

8/1, 8 PM dark, savagely brilliant guitarist Ava Mendoza in a rare solo show at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St., Gowanus, $15 cash only at the door, space limited, RSVP to reserve your ticket, She says the punk band on after her are fun too

8/2, 8 PM a live performance of new Christopher Cerrone song cycles by soprano Lindsay Kesselman, vocalist Theo Bleckmann, and a chamber choir, accompanied by Wild Up under Christopher Rountree. at Arete Gallery, $20 includes copy of the new cd

8/2, 9:45 PM perennially entertaining first wave-style punks the Car Bomb Parade play the album release show for their new one, followed by female-fronted screamers Sister Munch and the evern louder, food-fixated But, Pyrite at the Gutter, $10

8/3, 6 PM: 70s soul nostalgia with what’s left of the Stylistics, the Manhattans, and Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes (minus the late great Philly soul bandleader) at the Amphitheatre at Coney Island, free, be aware that this is a corporate venue and security is extremely hostile

8/3, 7 PM rising star sitarist Abhik Mukherjee with Dibyarka Chatterjee on tabla at the Chhandayan Center for Indian Music $16

8/3. 7 PM the Post-Haste Reed Duo play the album release show for their playful, charming new one at Spectrum,

8/3, 8ish legendary, intense former Come bandleader and haunting indie-psych guitarist Thalia Zedek’s E followed by ageless mostly-female CB’s era funk-punk/postrockers the Bush Tetras playing the album release show for their new one at the Mercury, $15

8/3, 8:30 PM Rachel Koblyakov “sets out to explore the various polyphonic and lyrical possibilities of the solo violin. The works chosen are with disregard to the composers’ era or the general categorization of their music, yet each piece favors either a polyphonic or lyrical form.” with works by J.S. Bach, Alfred Schnittke, Marc-André Dalbavie, Orlando Bass, Michael Finnissy, Dai Fujikura, and Matthias Pintscher.at Spectrum, $15

8/6, 1/3 PM improvisational jazz big band Go: Organic Orchestra & the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play material from their upcoming triple vinyl album in the park on Governors Island,

8/6, 6 PM dancers Rasika Kumar,Sahasra Sambamoorthi and Nadhi Thekkek perform their new piece Unfiltered, inspired by the Bharatanatyam tradition, which “explore the everyday moments that eventually lead to the boiling points that cascade into change” with a live score by pyrotechnic vocalist Roopa Mahadevan at the Mezzanine Theatre, 502 W 53rd St, $30

8/6-18, 8:30/10 PM guitar icon Bill Frisell eads his trio with Thomas Morgan on bass and Rudy Royston on drums at the Vanguard, $35. Saxophonist Greg Tardy joins the festivities starting on 8/13. Then Frisell is there through the 25th as part of Andrew Cyrille’s quartet

8/10,,7 PM Ensemble Nikel play works by Klaus Lang and other contemporary composers at Wagner Park north of Battery Park. 8/14 at 8 they’re at the DiMenna Center playing works by Simon Løffler, Steven Takasugi, Clara Iannotta, Mirela Ivičević and Julien Malaussena for $20/$10 stud/srs

8/11, 1 PM not a music event per se but very cool: Jiva Dance company perform their apocalyptic Bharatanatyam suite The Four Horsemen: “The stories – a woman shackled to the life of a courtesan (conquest), a woman reminiscing the night she spent with her lover who is at war (war), a mother searching for nourishment for her child in the midst a sandstorm (famine), and finally a woman at the end of her life recalling memories that span youthful joy to hardship and loss (death) – are touchingly timely,” at the Mezzanine Theatre, 502 W 53rd St, $25

8/11, 2:30 PM the rapturous, mighty Navatman Music Collective – this continent’s only Indian carnatic choir, and one of only three in the world – sing their new suite Bridges of Joy at the Mezzanine Theatre, 502 W 53rd St, $25

8/11, 3 PM ish funk-punk-postpunkers the B Boys play the album release show for their new one at Union Pool, free

8/11, 7:30 PM noir Americana siren and Hadestown creator Anais Mitchell opens for a ex-crackhead hanger-on from the 60s who was once in a pioneering janglerock band, at Damrosch Park, get there early because all the old hippies will take the seats

8/15 8 PM ambitious, perennially tuneful saxophonist Mike McGinnis leads his quartet with Jacob Sacks on piano followed by alto player Jonathan Crompton doing the album release show for his new one with Ingrid Laubrock and Patrick Breiner on tenor sax, plus bassist Adam Hopkins and drummer Kate Gentile at the Owl

8/18, 6 PM oldschool salsa with Jose “El Canario” Alberto and La Sonora Ponceña at the Coney Island Amphitheatre, free, it’s a pretty small place run by corporate idiots and youlll need to get there early to get in

8/31, 6 PM mesmerizing, intricate, anthemic oudist Brian Prunka and band followed at 8 by accordion genius Shoko Nagai ’s haunting, increasingly loud and psychedelic Tokala Silk Road/klezmer mashup project and at 10 by Rana Santacruz – the Mexican Shane MacGowan, but without the booze if you can imagine that – at Barbes

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. Believe it or not, some of this year’s free summer concert series schedules still haven’t been announced yet – as soon as they are, the good stuff will be on this page.

If you’re leaving your hood, don’t get stuck waiting for a train that never comes, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar:

7/14-28, 8 PM this year’s International Keyboard Festival featuring inexpensive performances by all kinds of up-and-coming and veteran talent at the Lang Recital Hall, on the 4th floor of the North Building at Hunter College. Most concerts are $10. Too many artists to list: the lineup is here

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of tropical bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film and tv work (Boardwalk Empire; Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays at 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays starting at around 10:45 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically woke, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

Tuesdays at 9 PM, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Most Thursdays at 8:30, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on three Saturdays: 7/6, 13 and 20 at 4 PM at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

6/1, 7:30ish oldschool 60s style soul crooner/guitarist Durand Jones & the Indications followed by Americana soulstress Emily King at Central Park Summerstage. To get in, you may have to stand through a set by a putrid opening act that starts about a half hour earlier

6/2 2 PM the Scandia String Quartet with flutist Lisa Hansen play works by Friedrich Kuhlau, Lard-Erik Larsson, Jean Sibelius, Edward Grieg, and Frank Foerster on the Billings Lawn on the downhill slope on the Hudson side of Ft. Tryon Park,

6/2, 7:30 PM disarmingly direct, lustrous jazz singer Marianne Solivan leads her quartet at Smalls. 6/10 at 8:30 she’s at the Bar Next Door with with Leonardo Pellegrino on guitar and Gregg August on bass, $12

6/3, 6 PM kinetic Cuban jazz pianist Elio Villafranca leads a trio and choir playing his new suite about Cuban freedom fighter Florentina Zulueta battling slave traders and conquistadors, at Barretto Point Park (a former slave burial ground) in the Bronx, free. In the case of rain, the concert will move indoors at 1440 Story Avenue – Bronx Charter School for the Arts

6/4, 8 PM bassist Nick Dunston, who blends jazz, 20th and 21st-century western classical music, experimental music, and no wave, leads his ensemble through the premiere La Operación for soprano, two alto saxophones, two basses, and two percussionists. “Inspired by the 1982 documentary of the same name by Ana María García, La Operación is an abstract interpretation of a historical phenomenon involving colorism in Puerto Rico, eugenics, medical malpractice, second-wave feminism, and American colonialism” at Roulettte, $18 adv tix rec

6/4, 8 PM 70s disco nostalgia with Patti LaBelle at Prospect Park Bandshell – this will be a mobscene, try watching from behind the back fence if you’re going

6/4, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Mozart, Brahms and others at Washington Square Park

6//6, 7:30 PM, repeating 6/7-8 at 8 the NY Philharmonic play David Lang’s new opera Prisoner of the State – inspired by Beethoven’s Fidelio, it chronicles the rise and fall of a tyrant and an escape attempt by a freedom fighter, what a coincidence in 2019! $34 tix avail

6/6, 8 PM jangly highway rock and gothic Americana with the Rural Alberta Advantage at the Mercury, $20 adv tix rec. Notice how so many old Bowery Ballroom acts are being squeezed into this much smaller space lately? Hmmm…

6/6, 8 PM New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez followed by theremin virtuoso Pamelia Stickney‘s awesome quartet with Sarah Bernstein: violin, Stuart Popejoy: piano/keys, & Danny Tunick: vibraphone. at Barbes, Stickney is back there on 6/12 at 8 and then on 6/21 she’s at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery with Ches Smith , $20. She’s back there the following night 6/22 with Chris Mannigan and Danny Tunick

6/8, noon LES punk guitar legend Simon Chardiet’s harder-swinging band the Rooftoppers at Bay 9 East at Riis Park in the Rockaways

6/8, 1 PM chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia play edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences at Ruppert Park, Second Ave. bet. E. 90 St. and E. 91 St.

6/8, 7 PM catchy, bouncy Oregon garage/psych/soul band the Midnight Callers at the Bitter End

6/8 7:30 PM Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber revisit their longime collaborator, renaissance man/filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles’ compositions, performing a live score with actors and band members reading from the original script while a silent print of his classic film Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song is projected onto the big screen on Fort Greene Park’s Myrtle Avenue hill.

6/8, 8 PM guitarslinger Mallory Feuer’s fiery band the Grasping Straws – sort of a mashup of Patti Smith and Hole’s first album – followed eventually at 10 by world-weary noir pop songwriter Mara Connor at the Mercury, $10 adv tix rec

6/9, 3 PM roots and dancehall reeggae with British Dependency, Mr. Kool, and Paul Brown at St. Albans Park in Queens

6/9, 3 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream plus Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail, if you can’t get to Central Park for the Philharmonic playing that symphony, you should go to this

6/9, 3 PM Elspeth Davis, mezzo-soprano and Gloria Kim, piano perform an all George Crumb program at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, Park Slope, any train to Grand Army Plz, sugg don

6/9, 7 PM brilliantly eclectic Ameriana guitarist Jason Loughlin‘s String Gliders play western swing followed by followed at 9:30 or so by paradigm-shifting Romany swing/psychedelic rock guitarist Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

6/11, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Brahms and Mohammed Fairouz at Washington Square Park

6/11, 8 PM the NY Philharmonic play Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 plus other stuff at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The program repeats on 6/12 in Central Park, 6/13 in Cunningham Park, at 193rd Street, near 81st Avenue or Union Turnpike in Queens, 6/14 in Prospect Park. The orchestra’s brass and percussion also play a free concert on 6/16 at 4 at the St. George Theatre in Staten Island

6/11, 8:30 PM alto saxophonist Caroline Davis with Rick Rosato on bass and Kenneth Salters on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12

6/13, 7:30 PM fiery, psychedelically bluesy oldschool soul/roadhouse jamband Lizzie & the Makers and folk noir duo the Tall Pines playing the album release show for their new one at Coney Island Baby, $12

6/14, 8 PM Lost Dog New Music Ensemble play the the world premiere of new orchestrations of Leonard Bernstein’s haunting Dybbuk and his much more carefree early suite Fancy Free.at the DiMenna Center, $20

6/15 boarding a 6 PM, sailing at 7 noisy, hazily jangly, psychedelic slowcore/free jazz/avant instrumentalists Sunwatchers and psychedelic latin soul tinged band Garcia Peoples aboard the Lucille, leaving from behind the heliport at 23rd St. and the East River, $20 adv tix available at the Rocks Off Concert Cruise box office there

6/16, 5 PM Bang on a Can regular and bass clarinetist Ken Thomson leads his sextet followed by eclectic indie classical piano trio Bearthoven at Arete Gallery, $15. At 8 PM there’s a separate show featuring trio In Dreams exploring “the hope and discomfort of dreams, the moments when we let go and imagine a thing wouldn’t name when we’re awake” including Houtaf Khoury’s “Apres un reve” (2008), a modern nightmare reacting to the terror of relentless war in the Middle East: a dream of hope amidst the fatigue of fear. Hasan Ucarsu’s “…the city of anachronistic nostalgia, Istanbul…” (2003) celebrates his and Derin’s hometown of Istanbul, a city rich in contradictions and layers,” plus an adaptation of Claude Debussy’s “Bilitis”, and Michael Fiday’s “Nine Haiku” that sets works by 8th century poet Basho with flashes of powerful images, dreams that come into focus for only a moment before they vanish,” separate $15 adm

6/18, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Liszt, Barber and Beethoven at Washington Square Park

6/18, 8 PM composer Alex Weiser “presents an evening of songs culminating the complete first act of his opera-in-progress, State of the Jews, with librettist Ben Kaplan. State of the Jews follows Theodor Herzl in the last year of his life, as his efforts to establish a Jewish state become increasingly desperate. It includes scenes from the Sixth Zionist congress, in which Herzl proposes Uganda as a possible land for Jewish settlement, and Herzl’s planned visit with Pope Pius X, to seeksthe Pope’s support for a Jewish state,” at Roulette, $18 adv tix tec

6/18 8:15 PM tuneful latin-inspired pianist/organist Bennett Paster leads his quintet playing the album release for this typically eclectic new one at the basement room at the Rockwood, $15

6/18-23, 8:30/10:30 PM perennially popular postbop pianist Brad Mehldau leads his trio at the Vanguard. Be aware that the early shows are selling out

6/18-22, 8:30 PM klezmer-jazz piano ico Anthony Coleman leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20 Choice pick: opening night, leading a chamber jazz nonet with strings

6/19, 7 PM the annual Juneteenth celebration at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall with the Harlem Chamber Players, pianist Cyrus Chestnut and his trio and many others, free, tix avail at the box offiice or here

6/20, 7:30 PM catchy, eclectic ska-pop/latin/reggae sounds from the Brown Rice Family followed by soaringly haunting Yorkshire lass Jan Bell and her all-female Americana band the Maybelles under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

6/22, 10 AM the annual free Punk Island allday concert on Governors Island, dozens of bands from all styles of punk. Houston folk-punk faves Days N Daze on the bill with dozens of others. Keep in mind that security to get on the ferry is FEROCIOUS, no alcohol alllowed, you will be searched.

6/22, 2 PM Shelley Thomas – best known as a spectacular, haunting singer specializing in music from across the Middle East and the Balkans, but also an accomplished oudist – with fellow oudist/percussionist Zafer Tawil, play a house concert in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, free, RSVP req, email for deets and location

6/22, 3 PM “dozens of musicians from Syria, Croatia, Egypt, Brazil, Cuba, and all over the world—many of whom are revitalizing their musical lives after resettling here in the U.S.— perform both traditional and contemporary music” at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, free

6/23, 8 PM the original cello rockers, Rasputina, as fearless and funny and relevant as ever, at Baby’s All Right, $20

6/23, 9ish the Abyssmals mash up horror surf and garage-psych sounds at the Gutter, $7

6/23, 10 PM edgy lefty latin soul guitarist Damian Quinonesacoustic at Freddy’s, 6/25 at 9 he leads an electric power trio at Bar Chord6/30, noon jangly New York original surf rock cult heroes the Supertones at Bay 9 East at Riis Park in the Rockaways

6/25 7:30 PM Johannes Fleischmann plays the album release show for his new record with works by Korngold and Erich Zeisl at the Austrian Cultural Center, free, rsvp req

6/25, 7:30 PM Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, the boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band that pretty much singlehandedly springboarded the oldtimey swing revival in NYC, at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

6/26, 10 PM a rare reunion of wild Brooklyn psychedelic cumbia legends Chicha Libre at Barbes. For anyone who missed their seven-year weekly residency here, this is a must-see. Their show Monday night was off the hook.

6/29, sets at 5:30 and 7:30 PM exceptionally adventurous indie classical group Ensemble Mise-En wind up their four-day festival with a free concert at Scandinavia House featuring works by 30 composers from 20 countries, including 27 premieres

7/3, 7;30 PM the Sisterhood of Swing Seven with Catherine Russell on vocals plus Camille Thurman,saxophone; Emily Asher, trombone;Endea Owens,bass; Shirazette Tinnin, drums; Champian Fulton,piano; and Molly Ryan guitar celebrate the legacy of legendary all-female 30s swing band the Sisterhood of Swing at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/4, 7:30 PM El Rey del Bajo, Bobby Valentín leads his Orchestra playing 70s Fania classics at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/5, 7 PM the Casym Steel Orchestra and soca hall of famer Mighty Sparrow – see if he cancels again this time – at Springfield Park in Queens

7/5, 8:30ish conscious hip-hop artist Leikeli47 followed by Chicago hardcore mc Mick Jenkins – who had the sense to nick a Gil Scott-Heron song for the title of his latest album – at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/9, 6:30 PM Fleure Seule play continental swing on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/9, 7:30 PM a rare NYC appearance by Brazilian rainforest song chanteuse Elba Ramalho,“The Queen of Forró,” at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/10, 7:30 PM the mighty, Middle Eastern-tinged Eyal Vilner Big Band with special guest Brianna Thomas burning down the house on vocals at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/12, 7:30 PM Maria Muldaur – yeah, her, Midnight at the Oasis – sings a Blue Lu Barker tribute and more at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/13, 7:30 PM retro swing with the Harlem Renaissance Orchestraplaying their 15th annual tribute to Illinois Jacquet at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

8/18, 6 PM oldschool salsa with Jose “El Canario” Alberto and La Sonora Ponceña at the Coney Island Amphitheatre, free, it’s a pretty small place run by corporate idiots and youlll need to get there early to get in

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. May is when most of the free outdoor summer concerts are announced, so this blog will be working extra hard all month long to get you info to plan your summer.

If you’re leaving your hood, don’t get stuck waiting for a train that never comes, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance. Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of south-of-the-border-style bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays at 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays starting at around 10:45 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically woke, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

Tuesdays at 9 PM, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Thursdays at 8:30, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Most Sundays at 5:15 PM, a free recital on the amazing, powerful, dynamic new organ at St. Thomas Church at 5th Ave and 53rd St. featuring some of the world’s greatest organists. The space is magnificent and the music usually is too. Right now the church fathers are programming pretty much everybody who used to work here and play the mighty old Aeolian-Skinner organ that finally had to be replaced. Check the concert calendar for details.

5/1-4, 8:30 PM arguably the foremost piano improviser alive (and a hell of a composer too), Satoko Fujii leads a series of groups at the Stone at the New School, Choice pick: opening duo night, reprising her two magical duo albums with bassist Joe Fonda

5/3, 1 PM Austrian organist Stefan Donner plays Austrian music of the 20th and 21st centuries including pieces by Johann Nepomuk David and Wolfgang Sauseng amongst others at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, 308 W 46th St, free. He’s also at he Actor’s Chapel, 239 W 49th St, the same day at 6:30 playing works by Louis Vierne and Felix Mendelssohn

5/3. 8 PM trombonist Vera Kemper’s Blu Cha Cha group followed at 10 by horn band Quatre Vingt Neuf (French for 89, a revolutionary date in case you missed it) playing Little Rascals theme music at Barbes

5/3, 10:30 catchy Booker T-esque soul jazz with the David Gibson/Jared Gold Hammond B3 organ band at the Fat Cat

5/3, midnight unpredictably fun, funny psychedelic art-rock band the Academy Blues Project at the big room at the Rockwood

5/4, 10 AM – 2:30 PM a free block party with music, dance and more to celebrate 60 years of Lincoln Center on the plaza there, an eclectic lineup includes hypnotically explosive live bhangra dance band Red Baraat at 1 PM plus some indoor classical shows, free tix distributed at 10 AM.

5/4, 8 PM surrealist avant garde free jazz collective thingNY present the premieres of Skylighght by Erin Rogers & Gelsey Bell, a duet for voice and saxophone “that explores that larger space as well as the space within their instruments, and You Must Read a Lot of Jung by Dave Ruder, a slow-moving melodic sextet that seem to keep turning over the same questions,” plus Stevie May’s Softboarding multimedia project at Artefix, 38-02 61st St, Woodside, Queens (7 train to 61st St), $10

5/5, 4 PM intense, fearlessly relevant Middle Eastern clarinetist Kinan Azmeh with pianist Jean Schneider, piano play a classical program TBA at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, free, no under-sixes.

5/5, 5 PM the Brooklyn chapter of the American Guild of Organists show off their chops: Aaron Comins, Stephen Danziger, Phillip Lamb, Nick Martellacci, Maria Rayzvasser, Thomas Hobson Williams, John A. Wolfe, and Ellen Wright play what is sure to be an eclectic program at the San Damiano Mission,, 85 N 15th St, Williamsburg, free, closest train is actually the G (which is running) to Nassau St.

5/11, 8 PM instrument inventor/electronic composer Daniel Fishkin plays a “concert that may or may not include solar sound, pre-synthesizer electronic music, craft in America, radical lutherie and wood attached or unattached to the ground,” at Flushing Town Hall, free, rsvp req, reception to follow

5/12, 3 PM first-wave punk rock chronicler Vivien Goldman reads from her new book Revenge of the She-Punksat McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St, 5/24 at 7 she’s at Rough Trade reading and performing a couple of her songs with pioneering Afro-punk bass player FeliceRosser of Faith

5/13, 8 PM Tigue Percussion play an eco-disaster themed program of 2 NYC premieres of works by Paula Matthusen and Elori Kramer with a recent batch of Tigue’s original music at Roulette, $18 adv tix req

5/15, 9 PM veteran Irish crooner Pierce Turner – who at his best comes across as a mashup of the Pogues and the Moody Blues – in a very rare intimate pub show at 11th St. Bar, get there early

5/16, 7 PM darkly colorful, perennially interesting bassist Linda May Han Oh leads a quartet bolstered by a string quartet playing the album release show for her new one at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

5/16, 7:30 PM Anthony Arnove – Howard Zinn’s collaborator for the Voices of a People’s History of the United States anthology emcees a night of Zinn-inspired readings and music tba at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

5/16, 9:30 PM fiery, dark art-rock/avant garde violinist Natalia Steinbach does double duty, playing the album release show for her new WaterLynx album, then teams up with her bandmates in the supergroup Feeding Goats with Michael Hafftka on guitar, Yonat Hafftka on theremin, Cameron Mizell on guitar at Pine Box Rock Shop

5/17, 8 PM crazy segue, but two good bands: sax-and-organ grooves with Craig Handy & 2nd Line Smith and baroque specialists the Beijing Guitar Duo at Flushing Town Hall, $12

5/17, 8:30 PM sepulchral, otherworldly Cairo singer/multi-instrumentalist Nadah El Shazly – who puts an eerie improvisational spin on classical Arabic song – followed by a series of short films about “neighborhood celebrities, the rebels of Chinese trap music, animated bungee dives, and conga lines on the high seas,” then party amid the tombstones in Green-Wood Cemetery, $16

5/18, 5 PM the Make Some Noise festival in Riverside Park just north of 91st St with Bacchantae, Barnard College’s all-female a cappella group, ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black, the Educadorian-flavred Luz Pinos Band and eventually genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou and her band at the crabapple grove in Riverside Park, enter at 91st or 95th St. and follow the noise

5/18-19 9 PM ageless third-wave ska/soul band the Slackers at the Kingsland, $20. 5/18 punk-popsters the Hempsteadys and Big Tuens open at 7; 5/19 it’s ska band Westbound Train and Love & Wra; 5/19 the opening acts are roots reggae group the Far East and goth band Deep Cuts

5/19, starting at around noon the annual Hoboken Arts & Music Festival, acts TBA starting at Washington St and 7th St. ; feral psychedelic guitarslinger Debra Devi is the highlight at 2. A former New York pierrot repreises his popular 80s faux latin lounge lizard act at around 6.

5/19, 2 PM slashing, careening, irrepressible former Friggs guitarslinger Palmyra Delran and band followed by sardonically relevant guitar-fueled female-fronted Americana punks Spanking Charlene at Mulligan’s Pub, 159 1st St. close to the Path train in Hoboken

5/22, 7 PM klezmer jazz band Hevreh Ensemble play the album release show for their new one at Drom, $10 adv tix rec. Followed at 9 ($10 separate adv tix admission) by the album release show by Cuban-style charanga La Banda Ramirez

5/23, 8 PM playful avant garde vocal icon Meredith Mon (performing on voice and keyboard) offers one of her more rare, intimate concerts in her premiere at the Jewish Museum, with members of her Vocal Ensemble, Katie Geissinger (voice) and Allison Sniffin (voice, violin and keyboard). $20. Check out the Leonard Cohen exhibit while you’re there

5/23, 10 PM “the Slippery Fish pay tribute to the Mexican pedal steel master Tõno Quirazco, who in the 1960’s combined the new sound of ska music out of Jamaica with country twang to invent a twist on the Caribbean sound. With Ari Folman-Cohen – bass and John Echelay – pedal steel,” at Barbes

5/26, 8 PM Peruvian psychedelic cumbia legends Los Mirlos – whose version of the national anthem or cumbia, Sonido Amazonico, remains the best-known – make their American debut at Brooklyn Bazaar, outrageously expensive, $35, but this might be your only chance to see the on this continent

5/29 8 PM Andrew Vladeck – whose lyrically-driven songs careen from stark oldtimey tunes to epic, cinematic anthems – at the small room at the Rockwood. Blueeyed soulstress/guitarslingerMiss Tess is at the basement room next door for $12 at the same time

6/1, 7:30ish oldschool 60s style soul crooner/guitarist Durand Jones & the Indications followed by Americana soulstress Emily King at Central Park Summerstage. To get in, you may have to stand through a set by a putrid opening act that starts about a half hour earlier

6/2, 7:30 PM disarmingly direct, lustrous jazz singer Marianne Solivan leads her quartet at Smalls. 6/10 at 8:30 she’s at the Bar Next Door with with Leonardo Pellegrino on guitar and Gregg August on bass, $12

6/4, 8 PM bassist Nick Dunston, who blends jazz, 20th and 21st-century western classical music, experimental music, and no wave, leads his ensemble through the premiere La Operación for soprano voice, two alto saxophones, two basses, and two percussionists. “Inspired by the 1982 documentary of the same name by Ana María García, La Operación is an abstract interpretation of a historical phenomenon involving colorism in Puerto Rico, eugenics, medical malpractice, second-wave feminism, and American colonialism” at Roulettte, $18 adv tix rec

6/4, 8 PM 70s disco nostalgia with Patti LaBelle at Prospect Park Bandshell – this will be a mobscene, try watching from behind the back fence if you’re going

6/4, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Mozart, Brahms and others at Washington Square Park

6//6, 7:30 PM, repeating 6/7-8 at 8 the NY Philharmonic play David Lang’s new opera Prisoner of the State – inspired by Beethoven’s Fidelio, it chronicles the rise and fall of a tyrant, what a coincidence in 2019! $34 tix avail

6/6, 8 PM jangly highway rock and gothic Americana with the Rural Alberta Advantage at the Mercury, $20 adv tix rec. Notice how so many old Bowery Ballroom acts are being squeezed into this much smaller space lately? Hmmm…

6/8, 1 PM chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia playing edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences at Ruppert Park, Second Ave. bet. E. 90 St. and E. 91 St.

6/8, 8 PM guitarslinger Mallory Feuer’s fiery band the Grasping Straws – sort of a mashup of Patti Smith and Hole’s first album – followed eventually at 10 by world-weary noir pop songwriter Mara Connor at the Mercury, $10 adv tix rec

6/9, 3 PM roots and dancehall reeggae with British Dependency, Mr. Kool, and Paul Brown.at St. Albans Park in Queens

6/9, 3 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream plus Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail, if you can’t get to Central Park for the Philharmonic playing that symphony, you should go to this

6/9, 3 PM Elspeth Davis, mezzo-soprano and Gloria Kim, piano perform an all George Crumb program at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, Park Slope, any train to Grand Army Plz, sugg don

6/9, 7 PM brilliantly eclectic Ameriana guitarist Jason Loughlin‘s String Gliders play western swing followed by followed at 9:30 or so by paradigm-shifting Romany swing/psychedelic rock guitarist Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

6/11, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Brahms and Mohammed Fairouz at Washington Square Park

6/11, 8 PM the NY Philharmonic play Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 plus other stuff at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The program repeats on 6/12 in Central Park, 6/13 in Cunningham Park, at 193rd Street, near 81st Avenue or Union Turnpike in Queens, 6/14 in Prospect Park. The orchestra’s brass and percussion also play a free concert on 6/16 at 4 at the St. George Theatre in Staten Island

6/11, 8:30 PM alto saxophonist Caroline Davis with Rick Rosato on bass and Kenneth Salters on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12

6/13, 7:30 PM fiery, psychedelically bluesy oldschool soul/roadhouse jamband Lizzie & the Makers and folk noir duo the Tall Pines playing the album release show for their new one at Coney Island Baby, $12

6/14, 8 PM Lost Dog New Music Ensemble play the the world premiere of new orchestrations of Leonard Bernstein’s haunting Dybbuk and his much more carefree early suite Fancy Free.at the DiMenna Center, $20

6/15 boarding a 6 PM, sailing at 7 noisy, hazily jangly, psychedelic slowcore/free jazz/avant instrumentalists Sunwatchers and psychedelic latin soul tinged band Garcia Peoples aboard the Lucille, leaving from behind the heliport at 23rd St. and the East River, $20 adv tix available at the Rocks Off Concert Cruise box office there

6/16, 5 PM Bang on a Can regular and bass clarinetist Ken Thomson leads his sextet followed by eclectic indie classical piano trio Bearthoven at Arete Gallery, $15. At 8 PM there’s a separate show featuring trio In Dreams exploring “the hope and discomfort of dreams, the moments when we let go and imagine a thing wouldn’t name when we’re awake” including Houtaf Khoury’s “Apres un reve” (2008), a modern nightmare reacting to the terror of relentless war in the Middle East: a dream of hope amidst the fatigue of fear. Hasan Ucarsu’s “…the city of anachronistic nostalgia, Istanbul…” (2003) celebrates his and Derin’s hometown of Istanbul, a city rich in contradictions and layers,” plus an adaptation of Claude Debussy’s “Bilitis”, and Michael Fiday’s “Nine Haiku” that sets works by 8th century poet Basho with flashes of powerful images, dreams that come into focus for only a moment before they vanish,” separate $15 adm

6/18, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Liszt, Barber and Beethoven at Washington Square Park

6/18, 8 PM composer Alex Weiser “presents an evening of songs culminating the complete first act of his opera-in-progress, State of the Jews, with librettist Ben Kaplan. State of the Jews follows Theodor Herzl in the last year of his life, as his efforts to establish a Jewish state become increasingly desperate. It includes scenes from the Sixth Zionist congress, in which Herzl proposes Uganda as a possible land for Jewish settlement, and Herzl’s visit with Pope Pius X, in which he seeks the Pope’s support for a Jewish Ssate,” at Roulette, $18 adv tix tec

6/18-23, 8:30/10:30 PM perennially popular postbop pianist Brad Mehldau leads his trio at the Vanguard. Be aware that the early shows are selling out

6/18-22, 8:30 PM klezmer-jazz piano ico Anthony Coleman leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20 Choice pick: opening night, leading a chamber jazz nonet with strings

6/20, 7:30 PM catchy, eclectic ska-pop/latin/reggae sounds from the Brown Rice Family followed by soaringly haunting Yorkshire lass Jan Bell and her all-female Americana band the Maybelles under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

6/22, 10 AM the annual free Punk Island allday concert on Governors Island, dozens of bands from all styles of punk. Houston folk-punk faves Days N Daze on the bill with dozens of others. Keep in mind that security to get on the ferry is FEROCIOUS, no alcohol alllowed, you will be searched.

6/22, 3 PM “dozens of musicians from Syria, Croatia, Egypt, Brazil, Cuba, and all over the world—many of whom are revitalizing their musical lives after resettling here in the U.S.— perform both traditional and contemporary music” at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, free

6/25 7:30 PM Johannes Fleischmann plays the album release show for his new record with works by Korngold and Erich Zeisl At the Austrian Cultural Center, free, rsvp req

6/25, 7:30 PM Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, the boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band that pretty much singlehandedly springboarded the oldtimey swing revival in NYC, at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

6/29, sets at 5:30 and 7:30 PM exceptionally adventurous indie classical group Ensemble Mise-En wind up their four-day festival with a free concert at Scandinavia House featuring works by 30 composers from 20 countries, including 27 premieres

7/3, 7;30 PM the Sisterhood of Swing Seven with Catherine Russell on vocals plus Camille Thurman,saxophone; Emily Asher, trombone;Endea Owens,bass; Shirazette Tinnin, drums; Champian Fulton,piano; and Molly Ryan guitar celebrate the legacy of the legendary all-female 30s swing band at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/4, 7:30 PM El Rey del Bajo, Bobby Valentín leads his Orchestra playing 70s Fania classics at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/5, 7 PM the Casym Steel Orchestra and soca hall of famer Mighty Sparrow – see if he cancels again this time – at Springfield Park in Queens

7/5, 8:30ish conscious hip-hop artist Leikeli47 followed by Chicago hardcore mc Mick Jenkins – who had the sense to nick a Gil Scott-Heron song for the title of his latest album – at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/9, 7:30 PM a rare NYC appearance by Brazilian jungle song chanteuse Elba Ramalho ,“The Queen of Forró,” at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/10, 7:30 PM the mighty, Middle Eastern-tinged Eyal Vilner Big Band with special guest Brianna Thomas burning down the house on vocals at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/12, 7:30 PM Maria Muldaur – yeah, her, Midnight at the Oasis – sings the songs of Blue Lu Barker and more at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/13, 7:30 PM retro swing with the Harlem Renaissance Orchestraplaying their 15th annual tribute to Illinois Jacquet at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

8/18, 6 PM oldschool salsa with Jose “El Canario” Alberto La Sonora Ponceña at the Coney Island Amphitheatre, free, it’s a pretty small place run by corporate idiots and youlll need to get there early to get in

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance. Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of south-of-the-border-style bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays at 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays starting at around 10:45 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

Tuesdays at 9 PM, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Thursdays at 8:30, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Most Sundays at 5:15 PM, a free recital on the amazing, powerful, dynamic new organ at St. Thomas Church at 5th Ave and 53rd St. featuring some of the world’s greatest organists. The space is magnificent and the music usually is too. Right now the church fathers are programming pretty much everybody who used to work here and play the mighty old Aeolian-Skinner organ that finally had to be replaced. Check the concert calendar for details.

Sundays at 9:30 PM paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel leads his band at Barbes – check the club calendar just to make sure.

Not a music event but dystopically interesting: Wednesday, Saturday and Monday until April 6, 7:30 PM”J.U.S.T Toys team and look deeper at Marius von Mayenburg’s themes: trust, safety, love, logic versus emotion, dream versus reality, and immortality versus murder. Re-envisioned by director Yuri Kordonsky, the protagonist is trapped in a nightmarish world full of bloodthirsty strangers – both human and canine. In this town, the desire to love becomes a desire to possess. Featuring Julia Ubrankovics and Tunde Skrovan, with visuals by Julia Standovar,.” at the Irondale Center, $30

4/2, 7:30 PM the Baroque Aria Ensemble perform an all-Bach program at Greenfield Hall at Manhattan School of Music, free

4/2-4, 8 PM hauntingly jangly noir Americana/surf/punkgrass band the Sadies at Union Pool. Wickedly catchy Americana/paisley underground rockers Girls on Grass open the 4/2 show at 8; closing night the Sadies play 2 sets starting at 8. Their set starts at 9 on 4/3.

4/2-7 8/10:30 PM one of this era’s most rewardingly melodic saxophonist/composers, Joshua Redman leads his trio at the Blue Note, $30 seats avail

4/2-6, 8/10:30 PM Benny Green – one of the most tuneful postbop pianists around – leads his trio at Birdland, $30 seats avail

4/4, 8 PM cleverly eclectic New Orleans-flavored pianist/crooner Nat Osborn followed by singer Dida Pelled – who specializes in the work of obscure/awesome songwriters like Connie Converse and Molly Drake – at the Owl

4/5, 7:30 PM hip-hop artist Dylan Golden performs along with a screening of his new filmHalf Dead. “Touching upon racial divisions, police brutality, and corruption in the government, Half Dead was filmed in Golden’s Brooklyn neighborhood, Flatbush, a community that has been affected tremendously by racism, poverty, and violence,” no joke, at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

4/5-6, 8 PMthe Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer play an all-Bartok program at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, $30 tix avail 10% off with code CHC29802. The 4/5 program includes the ballet score to The Miraculous Mandarin and the Concerto for Orchestra, while the second features Hungarian folksong arrangements and the one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle.

4/5, 9 PM brooding instrumentalists Mehahan Street Band followed by psychedelic Afrobeat groove group Budos Band playing the album release show for their new one at Bowery Ballroom, $20 adv tix rec. They’re at the Music Hall of Williamsburg the following night, 4/6 for the same deal, general admission

4/5, 9 PM pianist Juho Pohjonen plays works by Rameau, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Scriabin at the 92nd St. Y, $25

4/6 the adult portion of day 2 of this year’s Brooklyn Folk Festival is split up into daytime and evening shows. During the day, Brotherhood of the Jug Band Blues – who do an awesome, slyly funny evocation of the Memphis Jug Band play at 1 followed at 1:30 with Kentucky Americana by Nate Polly, the Mammals at 2:30, rising star banjoist Little Nora Brown at 3:30, at 4 Arkansas string band the Ozark Highballers, at 4:30 ragtime group the Lovestruck Balladeers and at 6 ferociously powerful, politically fearless southern gothic banjo player Amythyst Kiah. On the side stage at 2:30 there’s a square dance led by by the City Stompers, at 4 Mara Kaye sings oldtime jazz and blues followed at 5 by Barry Clyde and then at 6 bluegrass band the Hayrollers. There are also workshops throughout the day for musicians and at 7 the premiere of the documentary film American Epic, about the dawn of folk recording in the US. at St. Ann’s Church in downtown Brooklyn, $25

4/6, 7 PM the evening portion of of day 2 of this year’s Brooklyn Folk Festival begins with east Kentucky string band the Local Honeys, at 8 oldtimey folk vets Frank Fairfield & Meredith Axelrod, at 8:40 brilliant, historically spot-on oldtime blues guitar/banjo/piano genius Jerron Blind Boy Paxton, at 9:30 Georgia sacred steel band Kashiah Hunter & Friends, at 10:20 multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud, at 11 New Orleans group the Big Dixie Swingers. The side stage starts cooking at 7 with oldtimey band the Wild Goats, at 8 Frankie Sunswept and the Sunwrays, at 9 the dub-ispired Ska-lopy Brass – the Jalopy Theatre’s own ska band – and at 10 the Four o’clock Flowers – R&B and Soul

4/6, 7:30 PM a tribute to jazz and latin flute legend Dave Valentin, featuring a quintet led by his musical director, pianist Bill O’Connell, with flutist Andrea Brachfeld in the Valentin role, followed by the debut of O’Connell’s new nonet A.C.E. (Afro-Caribbean Ensemble) at the Hostos Community College auditorium, 450 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, $20//$5 stud

4/6, 8 PM not the most intuitive segue but should be a great time: hard-hitting, brass-fueled newschool latin soul/boogaloo dance band Spanglish Fly and then trumpet icon Frank London’s Mini-Klezmer AllStars, at Flushing Town Hall, $16

4/6, 8 PM Deepal Chodhari on santoor with Suryaksha Deshpande on tabla at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

4/6, 8:30 PM a great setup for a potent up-and-coming player: Chet Doxas on saxophone with Matt Pavolka on bass and Billy Mintz on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12. Doxas is also solo at Downtown Music Gallery the following night, 4/7 at 6.

4/7, 2 PMIstván Várdai (cello) and Roman Rabinovich (piano) play works by Schubert, Beethoven, and Rachmaninov at the Town Hall, $17

4/7 the Sunday portion of this year’s Brooklyn Folk Festivalis divided up into daytime and evening shows. The Afternoon starts around 3 with 60s jugband legend Jim Kweskin, at 3:30 Kentucky fiddler John Harrod, at 4 19th century style string band the Down Hill Strugglers, at 5 Baby Gramps, and at 5:45pm Ian Felice (of the Felice Brothers). The side stage has some workshops and demos and at 4:30 the Jalopy Chorus led by Eva Salina and then a couple of student performances, at St. Ann’s Church in downtown Brooklyn, $25.

4/7, 5 PM the Kandinsky Trio perform a lyrical early Beethoven piano trio and then will be joined by clarinetist Jose Garcia Taborda and narrator Patricia Raun for Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

4/9, 7:30 PM a series of chamber ensembles play works by a global cast of composers including Mendelssohn, De Falla, Gerardo Guevara, Wang Jianzhong and others at Miller Hall at Manhattan School of Music, free

4/9, 8:30 PM a very rare US appearance by octogenarian Sardinian launeddas (ancient reed bagpipe) virtuoso Luigi Lai playing “some of the most primal and ritualistic music in the European tradition” at the Stone at the New School, $20

4/10, 7:30 PM the Mannes Orchestra plays a preview performance of Carl Davis’s kindertransport-themed Last Train to Tomorrow followed by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 at the big New School first-floor auditorium at 63 5th Ave, free

4/11, 8 PM the 21st annual MATA Festival “opens with a triptych of intimate works that use dis- and re-embodied voices to reflect how our choices define us. Cellist John Popham joins the Bennardo-Larson Duo to animate haunting works by Julie Herndon (You Can Only) and Matt Evans (Still Life 1a+1b) framing Dutch composer Thomas Bensdorp’s revealing personal drama Family Plot for video and automated music boxes. This cathartic evening demonstrates that even in the face of absence, individual voices maintain their power,” at the Kitchen, $25

4/12, 7 PM the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes – join forces with up-and-coming new music ensemble Face the Music to play pieces by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass plus originals at the Rubin Museum of Art, $25

4/12-13, 7:30 PM Ralph Bowen – a rare combination of power and compositional finesse – on the tenor sax with his quartet at Smalls

4/12 8 PM playfully lyrical, fearlessly political superduo Kill Henry Sugar – guitar/banjo mastermind Erik Della Penna and drummer Dean Sharenow – followed by live dub band Combo Lulo playing the album release show for their new one at Barbes

4/12, 8 PM classic MATA Festival eclecticism: vocalists Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Charlotte Mundy join in “an eclectic program that examines the complexity of communication in today’s world. Composers, filmmakers and performers from Iceland to Turkey to Brazil come together to explore the ways in which intent can be misunderstood, systems can fail, and how human communication can seem impossible. With performances by composer-performers Ali Can Puskulcu and Daniel Corral, and the American premiere of Maja Hannisdal and Tone Kittelsen’s short film The Nordic Escape with music by Krístin Thora Haroldsdottír. It tackles the challenges of communication head-on to understand how we may truly connect in the social media age,” [good luck with that], at the Kitchen, $25

4/12, 9 PM fiery gutbucket organ music with the Juke Joint Jelis with Brianna Thomas on vocals and Greg Lewis on B3 at Bar Lunatico

4/12, 9 PM soaring, theatrical art-rock pianist/songwriter Crystal Bright at the Way Station

4/12, 10 PM serpentine, cinematic art-rock instrumentalists You Bred Raptors followed eventually at midnight by edgy, uneasy female-fronted retro new wavers the New Tarot at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $15

4/13, 8 PM typical MATA Festival edginess: “on an intrepid journey from our present to the post-human future. pianist Conrad Tao and a chamber ensemble play Remy Siu’s Foxconn Frequency no. 2, a multimedia theater work that questions perfection, pedagogy, and factory culture, and – wrapped in aluminum foil – vocalist Paul Pinto, in works that make the future come alive in all of its sensory overload – a world of androids, bots, and zombies where yesterday’s science fiction is tomorrow’s reality,” yikes, at the Kitchen, $25

4/16, 7:30 PM Del Rey – one of the great oldtime Americana fingerstyle blues guitarist out there – in a rare Brooklyn show on guitar and uke downstairs at the old American Can building, 232 3rd St. in Gowanus, F/R to 4th Ave/9th St. $15

4/18, 8 PM indie classical group American Contemporary Music Ensemble and Third Coast Percussion play a composer portrait of the fearlessly political, theatrical David T. Little at the Miller Theatre, $20 tix avail

4/18, 8 PM the Orchestra of St. Luke’s play works by Haydn, Prokofiev and Ravel at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hal, $30 seats avail

4/18, 8 PM, avant garde trumpeter Nate Wooley leads an ensemble at the Old Stone House in Park Slope $10

4/18, 8 PM pianist Richard Valitutto invites listeners to reflect on the modern/postmodern dialectic [can’t we just stay modern for this one?] in a program of solos by Rebecca Saunders, György Kurtág, Artur Avanesov, and a premiere by Thomas Feng, followed by a rare solo set by vibraphonist Patricia Brennan at Arete Gallery, $15

4/19, 7:30/9:30 PM poignant, eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo, leads his tango octet at the Jazz Gallery, $25. He’s here the next night, 4/20 with his mighty big band for the same price

4/19, 8 PM the gorgeously shapeshifting Iranian Hamidreza Maleki Ensemble followed at 9:15 by a screening of “Apart-ment” by fillmmaker Mohamad Aghebati at Spectrum, $15

4/20, 8 PM blistering ska-punk band Uncle Djuzeppe & the Mob, the dark second-wave style ska crew the Ladrones and then horn-fueled psychedelic cumbia band Consumata Sonidera, playing the album release show for their new one, at the Mayday Space, 176 St. Nicholas Ave (Himrod/Stanhope), Bushwick, L to DeKalb, $10. Figures they’d do this on 4/20.

4/21, 7 PM hauntingly lyrical art-rock songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Joanna Wallfisch plays the album release show for her new one Far Away From Any Place Called Home, with Marta Sanchez on piano at Joe’s Pub, $15. Followed at 9:30 (separate $16 adm) by fiery ecological activist/bandleader Rev. Billy and his massive original gospel-style choir

4/25, 7 PM wryly psychedelic cinematic Italophile instrumentalists/parodists Tredici Bacci followed by a rare reunion of Brian Carpenters legendary 90s noir/circus rock band Beat Circus playing the album release show for their new one at National Sawdust, $20 adv trix rec

4/25, 8 PM singer Dida Pelled – who specializes in the work of obscure/awesome songwriters like Connie Converse and Molly Drake – followed at 10 by followed by horn-driven psychedelic band Los Cumpleanos at Barbes.

4/25, 8:30 PM Live Skull in their only second Brooklyn performance since 1985 at the Market Hotel, all ages, $12. If Sonic Youth were the noiserock Beatles (ok, they weren’t, just making an analogy here), Live Skull were the Stones.

4/25, 8:30 PM rapturous Indian carnatic composer/violinist Arun Ramamurthy with his trio at the Jalopy, $15

4/25, 9 PM crystalline-voiced noir Americana songwriter Jessie Kilguss with her excellent band followed by the ageless, catchy, Beatlesque Bubble at Hank’s, $10

4/25, 9 PM astonishingly prolific and acerbic guitarist Mary​ ​Halvorson with Jessica Pavone on viola followed by intense avant jazz singer Amirtha Kidambi leading her band through the album release show for her new one at Union Pool, $12

4/26, 7 PM otherworldly Georgian choral group Ensemble Adilei with “wild yodeling by Lasha Bedenashvili (“the beast”), as well as underrepresented women’s voice with the Chamgeliani Sisters, who sing beautifully haunting music from Svaneti, a mountainous region,” at Elebash Hall at CUNY, 365 5th Ave north of 34th St., $25

4/26, 7 PM percussionist Rajna Swaminathan leads a killer ensemble with her sister Anjna on violin and Amir ElSaffar on trumpet playing the album release show for her new one Of Agency and Abstraction at the Rubin Museum of Art, $30

4/28, noon pianist Giusy Caruso plays Jacques Charpentier’s 72 Etudes Karnatiques at Spectrum followed eventually at 5 by solo works tba from members of the Iranian Female Composers Association and then at 7:30 Iranian traditional ensemble the Tan Haw Band, $15

4/28, 2 PM pianist Peter Serkin – one of the really great ones – plays a program at a place he seems to like a lot, the Town Hall, $17 tix avail

4/28, 8 PM brilliant carnatic violinistAnjna Swaminathan debuts her new multimedia suite “inspired by the works of Indian Malayali painter and artist Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906) and Tamil poet Subramania Bharati (1882–1921), artists and freedom fighters integral to shaping images of women as vessels of Indian national identity during the movement against the British Raj,”at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec.

4/30, 8 PM composer, and pianist Mary Prescott premieres her otherworldly Songs Between Life and Death with an excellent septet featuring Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet and Sara Serpa on vocals at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

4/30-5/4, 8:30 PM arguably the foremost piano improviser alive (and a hell of a composer too), Satoko Fujii leads a series of groups at the Stone at the New School, $20. Choice pick: opening night with her Orchestra NYC – who put out the best album of 2017 – is obvious, but the 5/1 duo show with bassist Joe Fonda also ought to be killer, considering their two albums together.

4/30, 10 PM the circus rock band that started the whole thing – World Inferno at the Mercury, $13 adv tix rec

5/1-4, 8:30 PM arguably the foremost piano improviser alive (and a hell of a composer too), Satoko Fujii leads a series of groups at the Stone at the New School, Choice pick: opening du night, reprising her two magical duo albums with bassist Joe Fonda

5/3, 1 PM Austrian organist Stefan Donner plays Austrian music of the 20th and 21st centuries including pieces by Johann Nepomuk David and Wolfgang Sauseng amongst others.at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, 308 W 46th St, free. He’s also at he Actor’s Chapel, 239 W 49th St, the same day at 6:30 playing works by Louis Vierne and Felix Mendelssohn

5/3, 10:30 catchy Booker T-esque soul jazz with the David Gibson/Jared Gold Hammond B3 organ band at the Fat Cat

5/3, midnight unpredictably fun, funny psychedelic art-rock band the Academy Blues Project at the big room at the Rockwood

5/4, 10 AM – 2:30 PM a free block party with music, dance and more to celebrate 60 years of Lincoln Center on the plaza there, an eclectic lineup includes hypnotically explosive live bhangra dance band Red Baraat at 1 PM plus some indoor classical shows, free tix distributed at 10 AM.

5/4, 7:30 PM fado stars Hélder Moutinho and Maria Emília with an all-star band: André Dias (Portuguese guitar), André Ramos (classical guitar) and Rodrigo Serrão (acoustic bass guitar) at the World Financial Center, free All singers on both nights will be backed up by a trio of dynamic musicians:.

5/4, 8 PM surrealist avant garde free jazz collective thingNY present the premieres of Skylighght by Erin Rogers & Gelsey Bell, a duet for voice and saxophone “that explores that larger space as well as the space within their instruments, and You Must Read a Lot of Jung by Dave Ruder, a slow-moving melodic sextet that seem to keep turning over the same questions,” plus Stevie May’s Softboarding multimedia project at Artefix, 38-02 61st St, Woodside, Queens (7 train to 61st St), $10

5/11, 8 PM instrument inventor/electronic composer Daniel Fishkin plays a “concert that may or may not include: solar sound, pre-synthesizer electronic music, craft in America, radical lutherie and wood that is attached or unattached to the ground,” free, rsvp req, reception to follow

5/14, drinks at 5:30, show at 6 So Percussion’s Jason Treuting leads a quintet playing his new works at the Miller Theatre, free

5/16, 7:30 PM Anthony Arnove – Howard Zinn’s collaborator for the Voices of a People’s History of the United States anthology emcees a night of Zinn-inspired readings and music tba at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

5/18, 5 PM the Make Some Noise festival in Riverside Park just north of 91st St with Bacchantae, Barnard College’s all-female a cappella group, ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black, the Educadorian-flavred Luz Pinos Band and eventually genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou and her band at the crabapple grove in Riverside Park, enter at 91st or 95th St. and follow the noise

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance. Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of south-of-the-border-style bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays in March Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg, two sets starting at 10:30 PM. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests.

Tuesdays in March, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at 9 PM at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Thursdays at 8:30 in March, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays in March, charmingly inscrutable Parisienne jazz chanteuse Chloe & the French Heart Jazz Band at Club Bonafide, $20. Schedule is 3/1 at 6, 3/8 at 9:30, 3/15 at 8, 3/22 at 5:30 and 3/29 at 6. She’ll also be there on 3/17 at 8, 3/24 and also 3/31 at 6 . Somebody give this woman a regular time slot, huh?

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM on March 23 and 30, returning to weekly Saturdays in April at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Saturdays in March, 6 PM Shelley Thomas – best known as a spectacular, haunting singer specializing in music from across the Middle East and the Balkans, but who is also an accomplished oudist – with a series of ensembles at Barbes

Most Sundays at 5:15 PM, a free recital on the amazing, powerful, dynamic new organ at St. Thomas Church at 5th Ave and 53rd St. featuring some of the world’s greatest organists. The space is magnificent and the music usually is too. Right now the church fathers are programming pretty much everybody who used to work here and play the mighty old Aeolian-Skinner organ that finally had to be replaced. Check the concert calendar for details.

3/1 Ty Segall at Warsaw is sold out – but in that space unless he really turns down you’re not going to hear anything anyway…

3/1, 7 PM sax quartet Nois make their New York debut with three world premieres by New York based composers Nathan Hudson, Howie Kenty and Ed Rosenberg III, plus Gemma Peacocke’s ‘Dwalm’, ‘Thirteen Changes’ from Pauline Oliveros and Georg Friedrich Haas’ ‘Saxophonquartett’ at Arete Gallery, $15

3/2, 6 PM hauntingly torchy songwriter Daphne Lee Martin at the small room at the Rockwood. Next door at the big room jaunty female-fronted original retro rocksteady band the Big Takeover plays at 9 for $10

3/2, 6 PM atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl and his group at Pete’s

3/3, 4 PM a live score and film screening of the silent classic East and West (1923), featuring klezmer jazz piano legend Pete Sokolow – composer of the original score for the 1991 remastered film – with the great Michael Winograd on clarinet to celebrate the 121st birthday of the film’s star, Molly Picon, at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St., $15 adv tix rec

3/3, 6 PM tuba duo Avant Garde Working Class with Joe Daley and Jesse Dulman followed at 7 by Karen Ng and Henry Fraser doing a clarinet/bass duo at Downtown Music Galley

3/3, 10 PM chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia play edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences at Barbes. The following night, 3/4, 6 PM they’re at the small room at the Rockwood

3/4, 7:30 PM early music chorale Calmus and adventurous early music ensemble the Sebastians play works by Handel, Bach, Tavener, Schutz, Palestrina and Rheinberger at Music Mondays, Advent Church, northwest corner of 93rd and Broadway, free

3/5, 7 PM Venezuelan group El Tuyero Ilustrado – cuatro player Edward Ramírez and singer and percussionist, Rafa Pino – play their new take on traditionaljoropo tuyero sounds at the Americas Society, $20

3/5, 7 PM rising star trumpeter Adam O’Farrill “with his new nine-piece ensemble Bird Blown Out of Latitude, performing new music born from the disorientation of personal displacement.” trumpeter Aaron Burnett and the Big Machine follow with special guest, the pyrotechnic Peter Evans at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/5-9, 8:30 PM postbop/improv jazz drum maven Ches Smith leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Many killer lineups: the best could be 3/8 with Kris Davis (piano), Marc Ribot (guitar), Leon Boykins, Devin Hoff (bass)

3/6, 7:30 PM avant-rock band Boio, the genre-obliterating Warp Trio, and Forward Music Project – Amanda Gookin’s multimedia project of solo cello works developed to empower women and girls – followed by Contemporaneous playing works by violet Barnum and Henry Threadgill – a homage to Butch Morris – at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/6, 7:30 PM iconic art-rockers the Bang on a Can All-Stars play world premieres of indie classical/art-rock dance music by Nicole Lizée, Josué Collado Fregoso, Henry Threadgill, and Trevor Weston, plus “three classics from Bang on a Can history by Annie Gosfield, Arnold Dreyblatt and Glenn Branca, with a rare performance of Branca’s massive “three dimensional” Movement Within, written specifically for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, in his unique tuning system and on his own original instruments” at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/7, 7 PM Zikrayat play slinky, cinematic classics from the golden age of Arabic song at Drom, $15

3/7, 7:30 PM a killer twinbill with two of the best, most unselfconsciously poignant solo string composer-performers out there: violinist/percussionist Christopher Tignor and Julia Kent playing the album release show for her new one at National Sawdust, $22 adv tix rec

3/7, 8 PM ferocious, female-fronted Afrobeat band Underground System followed by wild Palestinian hip-hop/dancehall reggae/habibi pop band 47soulat Bric Arts, $15 adv tix rec. Underground System are also at C’Mon Everybody on 3/22 at 11 for five bucks less.

3/7, time tba (guessing 9ish) the L Train Brass Band (who won’t be able to get home after the show, presumably), Dingonek Street Band playing second line, Afrobeat, Ethio-jazz, and Brooklyn’s original punk Balkan horn group Hungry March Band at Pine Box Rock Shop

3/8, 7:30 PM violinist Stanichka Dimitrova and the PhiloSonia ensemble explore the concept of sturm und drang in works by Schubert, Wolf and Brahms, woo hoo, at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $25/$10 stud/srs

3/9, 6 PM haunting, magical Middle Eastern classical singer Shelley Thomas and her band followed at 8 by art-song luminary Karen Mantler and at 10 by Rana Santacruz – the Mexican Shane MacGowan, but without the booze if you can imagine that – at Barbes

3/9, 7:30 PM brilliant tabla player/composer and Brooklyn Raga Massive anchor Sameer Gupta does double duty, first in a trio set with sarangi player Rohan Misra and then with sitarist Rishab Sharma at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

3/9, 8 PM one of the year’s best twinbills: brilliant, soaring south Indian chanteuse Falu and her orchestra and hypnotic, pulsing, sousaphone-driven Guadalupian/New Orleans band Delgres a at Flushing Town Hall, $16

3/10, 2 PM Eleonor Bindman and Susan Sobolewski of Duo Vivace play a family-friendly concert including Bernstein’s Overture from Candide and Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $20 adults/$10 kids

3/10, 3 PM violist Elise Frawley leads an ensemble playing a program tba at the 92nd St.Y, free

3/16, 2 PM two of the world’s most lyrical, captivating Indian carnatic violinists, Trina Basu and Anjna Swaminathan “engage together in an improvisational dialogue with an art piece of their choice during a special museum “Art & Music” tour” at the Rubin Museum of Art

3/17, 3 PM Benjamin Larsen, cello and Hyungjin Choi, piano​ play works by Grieg, Schumann and Robert Sirota at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, sugg don

3/17, 3 PM the North/South Chamber Orchestra celebrate St Patrick’s Day with the premiere of a clarinet concerto by Irish composer Frank Corcoran. Also on the program :works by David Froom, John David Little and Heather Savage. Clarinetist Sammy Lesnick and flutist Lisa Hansen are the soloists at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church, 120 W 69th St,free

3/19, 7:30 PM percussionist Alessandra Belloni‘s rustically witchy tarantella band plays the release show for her joint book/cd project Healing Journeys of the Black Madonna at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave, $25

3/20, midnight boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band at the Ear Inn

3/21, 7 PM the harrowing, immigration-themed multimedia performance Ask Hafiz – the story of Sahar Muradi’s tumultuous journey from a Soviet-ruled Afghanistan to Queens. “Along the way, Sahar, following an age-old practice, asks questions to the book of poetry by Hafiz. The answers are revealed through songs composed and sung by Haleh Liza, dance choreographed and performed by Malini Srinivasan, with music by Adam Maalouf, Trina Basu, Bala Skandan and Rich Stein, at Joe’s Pub

3/21, 7:30 PM the deservedly acclaimed Brooklyn Youth Chorus sing new work by Owen Pallett, joined by Alev Lenz for a set of her songs followed by by similarly lush, enigmatic art-rock/parlor pop band Wye Oak at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/21, 8 PM saxophonist María Grand’s “Music As a User’s Manual” which “Invites the audience to use it as a manual – the manual will offer several things that can be done: scream; meditate; and others” at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/23, 2 PM the Orchestra of St Luke’s play a composer portrait of Gabriela Lena Frank at Flushing Town Halll, free w/rsvp. The program repeats on 3/24 at 2 PM at Restoration Plaza, 1368 Fulton St. in Bed-Stuy; 3/28 at 7 at the Hostos Center, 450 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and 4/4 at 6 at the Harlem School for the Arts, 645 St Nicholas Ave

3/23, 7 PM the Witches (Louna Dekker-Vargas, flutes, and Ledah Finck, violin/viola) play works “with their signature minimalist choreography, reimagining the Delphic oracle Pythia, in all her mystic strangeness and all her beautiful mortality” followed at 9 by electroacoustic artist ViolaYip improvising with knobs and switches, lazy susan and lightbulbs, microphones and speakers at Spectrum, $15

3/23, 7:30 PM terse, purposeful classical Indian raga ambience: Rohan Misra on sarangi with Dibyarka Chatterjee on tabla at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

3/27, 6 PM a good tunesmith twinbill: cleverly lyrical, edgily funny, soaring-voiced powerpop/acoustic rock singer Tamara Hey followed by the much darker, more eclectic darkly eclectic, enigmatic Lorraine Leckie at the small room at the Rockwood

3/29, 7 PM genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou and her band play her harrowing jazz suite Comfort Girl, about women forced into sexual slavery under the Japanese in WWII at Joe’s Pub, $15

3/29. 7 PM the Latin American Chamber Players perform works by Ravel, Boulanger, Francaix, Roussel and Poulenc at Scholes St. Studios, $20

3/29, 7 PM pianist Conor Hanick and Parallax Ensemble play works by Kati Agócs, Balázs Futó, Nicolas Namoradze; Robert Beaser and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade; and the U.S. premiere of Petrichor, a violin-piano duet based on J.S. Bach by Jocelyn Morlock at 1 Rivington St. upstairs, $15/$10 stud/srs

3/29,7 PM not a music event but of interest: “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking work by Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. Boasting a large, zany cast of characters, the play asks one of the most plaguing questions in the Christian ideology: What happened to Judas Iscariot? The story is that Judas was the disciple of Jesus who betrayed his friend and teacher to the authorities. He is seen as the man responsible for Jesus’s death; afterwards, Judas fell into despair and hung himself from an olive tree; since then, he has been suffering for his deeds deep in Hell, and will continue to do so for all eternity. Is that really fair? Was Judas the duplicitous master of his own fate, a much-suffering pawn used for Jesus’s ends, or just a man who made a mistake? Set in a courtroom in Purgatory, The Last Days puts Judas’ case to a hilarious, riotous, piercing trial, the results of which are sure to make the inhabitants of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory -mand the audience — reconsider.” At St. George’s Episcopal Church, 7 Rutherford Pl, free, RSVP required

3/30, 8 PM composers and instrumentalists Daniel Fishkin, Cleek Schrey, and Ron Shalom — the U.S.’s only extant daxophone consort – at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs “The daxophone is a thin wooden strip played with a bow, created by the German improviser/inventor Hans Reichel in 1987. The instrument’s sound, somewhere between a cello and badger, ranges from furtive gurgles and delicate whistles to wild screams.”

4/4, 7:30 PM, repeating 4/5 at 8 PM and 4/6 at 2 and 8 PM the NY Philharmonic play works by Beethoven, Bernstein, Stucky ,Wagner and very young composers at Avery Fisher Hall, $5 tix available to NYPD, NYFD, EMT, and NYC city service professionals.

4/5-6, 8 PMthe Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer play an all-Bartok program at Stern Auditoirum at Carnegie Hall, $30 tix avail 10% off with code CHC29802. The 4/5 program includes the ballet score to The Miraculous Mandarin an the Concerto for Orchestra are showcased in the opening concert, while the second features Hungarian folksong arrangements and the one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle.

4/6, 7:30 PM a tribute to jazz and latin flute legend Dave Valentin, featuring a quintet led by his musical director, pianist Bill O’Connell, with flutist Andrea Brachfeld in the Valentin role, followed by the debut of O’Connell’s new project A.C.E. (Afro-Caribbean Ensemble) featuring a nonet at the Hostos Community College auditorium, 450 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, $20//$5 stud

4/7, 2 PMIstván Várdai (cello) and Roman Rabinovich (piano) play works by Schubert, Beethoven, and Rachmaninov at the Town Hall, $17

4/7, 5 PM the Kandinsky Trio perform a lyrical early Beethoven piano trio and then will be joined by clarinetist Jose Garcia Taborda and narrator Patricia Raun for Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance. Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of south-of-the-border-style bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays in February at 10 PM Melissa Gordon of Melissa & the Mannequins at LIC Bar. One of the best purist janglerock songwriters in NYC works up new material – should be a clinic in good tunesmithing

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays in February, Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg, two sets starting at 10:30 PM. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests.

Tuesdays in February, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at 9 PM at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Thursdays at 8:30 in February, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays in February and March, 6 PM charmingly inscrutable Parisienne jazz chanteuse Chloe & the French Heart Jazz Band at Club Bonafide, $20. They’re also there on 2/24 at 5:30 PM

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM in February as well as

March 23 and 30, returning to weekly Saturdays in April at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Most Sundays at 5:15 PM, a free recital on the amazing, powerful, dynamic new organ at St. Thomas Church at 5th Ave and 53rd St. featuring some of the world’s greatest organists. The space is magnificent and the music usually is too. Right now the church fathers are programming pretty much everybody who used to work here and play the mighty old Aeolian-Skinner organ that finally had to be replaced. Check the concert calendar for details.

2/2, 7:30 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play a Chinese New Year celebration at NJPAC in Newark with Beethoven’s Festival Overture, works by Tan Dun and Li Huanzhi and others, $20 tix avail

2/2, 8 PM left coast postbop pianist Richard Sears with his trio followed by torchy singer Jennifer Charles’ and guitar mastermind Oren Bloedow’s haunting, fearlessly political art-rock/noir band Elysian Fields on their home turf at the Owl, $10

2/2, Unsteady Freddie‘s monthly surf rock extravaganza at Otto’s begins at 9 PM with Brooklyn cover trio the Band of Others, Link Wray cover band the Wraycyclers at 10, the Superbness (let’s hope they have it) at 11 and at midnight wickedly jangly surf/twang/country instrumentalists the Bakersfield Breakers

2/7-8, 7 PM “Spanish guitarist and composer Oscar Peñas and his Jazz Quartet combine with the Mivos Quartet to create a classical-jazz suite inspired by the 3,000-year-old Andalusian fishing tradition known as the almadraba” at Aaron Davis Hall, $20/$10 stud/srs

2/7, 7:30 PM pianistMackenzie Melemed plays a program tba at Greenwich House Music School, free

2/7, 8 PM boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band at Hank’s, $10. They’re at Bar Chord on 2/23 at 9 for free.

2/7-9 and 2/13-16, 8 PM Robert Ashley’s opera Improvement (Don Leaves Linda): “follows the adventures of its protagonist Linda, whose travels and romances can be read as attempts at assimilation and cultural cross-pollination, with varying degrees of success and rejection. The metaphor stretches in time from 1492—the beginning of a European consciousness of America and the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain—to the late 1940s on the West Coast (representing the future of the USA). Densely layered streams of text, lush live vocals, and a minutely structured electronic orchestra combine to present a portrait of the American psyche” at the Kitchen, $25

2/8, 8 PM busker legends the Xylopholks in their furry suits followed by horn band Quatre Vingt Neuf (French for 89, a revolutionary date in case you missed it) playing Little Rascals theme music at Barbes

2/8, 8 PM the Dead Jetsetters – who do a decent late 60s MC5 impersonation – at Arlene’s, $10

2/9, 2 PM soul/funk trumpeter Lee Hogans and his Quintet at Harlem School for the Arts, 645 St. Nicholas Ave at 141st St., free

2/9, 4 PM the Erik Satie Quartet – Ron Hay (trombone), Max Seigel (bass trombone), Ben Holmes (trumpet), and Andrew Hadro (bari sax) –reinvent classic and obscure Satie chamber pieces as well as rare compositions by his obscure contemporaries, followed at 6 by low register reedman Josh Sinton’s Phantasos playing Morphine covers, at 8 by intense, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo leading his Tango Quartet and at at 10 by Rana Santacruz – the Mexican Shane MacGowan, but without the booze if you can imagine that – at Barbes

2/9, 7:30 PM sitarist Kinnar Seen with tabla player Samir Chatterjee at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

2/12, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6 the Mivos Quartet & guitarist Nadav Lev play new music by Murail, Abbasi and Klartag at the Miller Theatre, free

2/12, 7 PM a major moment in New York music historiography:“Roulette is unveiling its historic archive of nearly 4,000 concerts dating back to its first concert in 1978. Today this includes hundreds of audio and video recordings, photos, notes, programs, posters, and ephemera collected, restored, and preserved, with thousands more items to come.” Literally everyone who was anybody in the downtown scene back in the day played Roulette – and a lot still do. Free.

2/12,7:30 PM new music for voice and organ by Kevin McCarter; Jinhee Han; David Picton; Eugene Marlow; Frank Retzel; Roger Blanc; Richard Brooks and Raoul Pleskow featuring Bill Gross, baritone, with Claudia Dumschat in the console at the Church of the Transfiguration, 1 E 29th St. $20

2/13, 7 PM the legendary klezmer duo of Andy Statman (clarinet/mandolin) and Walter Zev Feldman (tsimbl/hammered dulcimer) for the first time in 35 years at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St, $15/$10 stud

2/14, 11 PM wryly psychedelic cinematic Italophile instrumentalists/parodists Tredici Bacci play the album release show for their new one at the Mercury, $12 grn adm

2/14. midnight rustic Colombian sounds with the Cumbia River Band at the small room at the Rockwood

2/15, 7 PM irrepressible bassist Moppa Elliott does triple duty: with Advancing on a Wild Pitch, then with the large improvisational ensemble Acceleration Due to Gravity and finally his Unspeakable Garbage, apparent heirs to the Mostly Other People Do the Killing satire-jazz throne at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

2/16, 8 PM charismatic, politically fearless, historically-inspired oldtime country blues duo Piedmont Bluz and bluegrass band Cole Quest & the City Pickers at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away”

2/20, 8 PM acerbic indie classical duo String Noise play “very quiet music written for two violins” by Catherine Lamb,Jurg Frey andLou Bunk at Arete Gallery, $20. They’re back here on 2/21 playing the album release show for their new one, $25 includes free prosecco

2/22, 7:30 PM the MSM Orchestra play Respighi’s The Pines of Rome plus works by Liszt and Arurtuinian at Neidorff-Karpati Hall at Manhattan School of Music, 130 Claremont Ave. (just north of W. 122nd St.), free, tix req

2/22, 7:30 PM legendary Black 47 leader and Irish punk songwriter Larry Kirwan and his allstar band play his new song cycle Ireland and America – A History in Song at the Schimmel Auditorium at Pace University, $30 tix avail

2/24, 3 PM violinist Suliman Tekalli leadsa trio playing works by Ives and Paolo Marchettini at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, Park Slope, any train to Grand Army Plz, sugg don

2/25, 7:30 PM Paul Chihara’s “Amatsu Kaze” for soprano, clarinet, flute, violin, cello, and piano: “Amatsu Kaze” is based on seven Haiku dealing with love, death and separation. The second half of the program features pianist Nadia Shpachenko-Gottesman performing music of Lewis Spratlan, Harold Meltzer, Hannah Lash, and James Matheson, at Symphony Space, $20

2/25, 8 PM Middle Eastern-tinged art-rock singer/pianist Brittany Anjou plays the album release show for her new one Enamiĝo Reciprokataj (Esperanto for “mutual breakdown”) with her trio at the Poisson Rouge, $10 adv tix rec.

2/26, 8 PM NY Polyphony sings a rare program of Alpine early music by Philippe Verdelot, Cipriano de Rore, plus works by Lassus, Clemens and Palestrina at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 W 46th St,$30 tix avail

3/1 Ty Segall at Warsaw is sold out – but in that space unless he really turns down you’re not going to hear anything anyway…

3/1, 7 PM sax quartet Nois make their New York debut with three world premieres by New York based composers Nathan Hudson, Howie Kenty and Ed Rosenberg III, plus Gemma Peacocke’s ‘Dwalm’, ‘Thirteen Changes’ from Pauline Oliveros and Georg Friedrich Haas’ ‘Saxophonquartett’ at Arete Gallery, $15

3/2, 4 PM cinematic, psychedelic quirk-pop keyboardist Michael Hearst presents “Curious, Unusual and Extraordinary” songs from his many bands followed at 8 by haunting, charismatic oldtimey-style banjo player and corrosively political songwriter Curtis Eller’s American Circus at Barbes

3/2, 6 PM hauntingly torchy songwriter Daphne Lee Martin at the small room at the Rockwood. Next door at the big room jaunty female-fronted original retro rocksteady band the Big Takeover plays at 9 for $10

3/2, 6 PM atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl and his group at Pete’s

3/3, 10 PM chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia play edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences at Barbes. The following night, 3/4, 6 PM they’re at the small room at the Rockwood

3/5, 7 PM Venezuelan group El Tuyero Ilustrado – cuatro player Edward Ramírez and singer and percussionist, Rafa Pino – play their new take on traditionaljoropo tuyero sounds at the Americas Society, $20

3/5, 7 PM rising star trumpeter Adam O’Farrill “with his new nine-piece ensemble Bird Blown Out of Latitude, performing new music born from the disorientation of personal displacement.” trumpeter Aaron Burnett and the Big Machine follow with special guest, the pyrotechnic Peter Evans at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/5-9, 8:30 PM postbop/improv jazz drum maven Ches Smith leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Many killer lineups: the best could be 3/8 with Kris Davis (piano), Marc Ribot (guitar), Leon Boykins, Devin Hoff (bass)

3/6, 7:30 PM avant-rock band Boio, the genre-obliterating Warp Trio, and Forward Music Project – Amanda Gookin’s multimedia project of solo cello works developed to empower women and girls – followed by Contemporaneous playing works by violet Barnum and Henry Threadgill – a homage to Butch Morris – at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/6, 7:30 PM iconic art-rockers the Bang on a Can All-Stars play world premieres of indie classical/art-rock dance music by Nicole Lizée, Josué Collado Fregoso, Henry Threadgill, and Trevor Weston, plus “three classics from Bang on a Can history by Annie Gosfield, Arnold Dreyblatt and Glenn Branca, with a rare performance of Branca’s massive “three dimensional” Movement Within, written specifically for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, in his unique tuning system and on his own original instruments” at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/7, 7 PM Zikrayat play slinky, cinematic classics from the golden age of Arabic song at Drom, $15

3/7, 7:30 PM a killer twinbill with two of the best, most unselfconsciously poignant solo string composer-performers out there: violinist/percussionist Christopher Tignor and Julia Kent playing the album release show for her new one at National Sawdust, $22 adv tix rec

3/7, 8 PM ferocious, female-fronted Afrobeat band Underground System followed by wild Palestinian hip-hop/dancehall reggae/habibi pop band 47soul at Bric Arts, $15 adv tix rec. Underground System are also at C’Mon Everybody on 3/22 at 11 for five bucks less.

3/8, 7:30 PM violinist Stanichka Dimitrova and the PhiloSonia ensemble explore the concept of sturm und drang in works by Schubert, Wolf and Brahms, woo hoo, at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $25/$10 stud/srs

3/9, 7:30 PM brilliant tabla player/composer and Brooklyn Raga Massive anchor Sameer Gupta does double duty, first in a trio set with sarangi player Rohan Misra and then with sitarist Rishab Sharma at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

3/9, 8 PM one of the year’s best twinbills: brilliant, soaring south Indian chanteuse Falu and her orchestra and hypnotic, pulsing, sousaphone-driven Guadalupian/New Orleans band Delgres a at Flushing Town Hall, $16

3/10, 2 PM Eleonor Bindman and Susan Sobolewski of Duo Vivace play a family-friendly concert including Bernstein’s Overture from Candide and Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $20 adults/$10 kids

3/10, 3 PM violist Elise Frawley leads an ensemble playing a program tba at the 92nd St.Y, free

3/16, 2 PM two of the world’s most lyrical, captivating Indian carnatic violinists, Trina Basu and Anjna Swaminathan “engage together in an improvisational dialogue with an art piece of their choice during a special museum “Art & Music” tour” at the Rubin Museum of Art

3/17, 3 PM Benjamin Larsen, cello and Hyungjin Choi, piano​ play works by Grieg, Schumann and Robert Sirota at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, sugg don

3/21, 7 PM the harrowing, immigration-themed multimedia performance Ask Hafiz – the story of Sahar Muradi’s tumultuous journey from a Soviet-ruled Afghanistan to Queens. “Along the way, Sahar, following an age-old practice, asks questions to the book of poetry by Hafiz. The answers are revealed through songs composed and sung by Haleh Liza, dance choreographed and performed by Malini Srinivasan, with music by Adam Maalouf, Trina Basu, Bala Skandan and Rich Stein, at Joe’s Pub

3/21, 7:30 PM the deservedly acclaimed Brooklyn Youth Chorus sing new work by Owen Pallett, joined by Alev Lenz for a set of her songs followed by by similarly lush, enigmatic art-rock/parlor pop band Wye Oak at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/21, 8 PM saxophonist María Grand’s “Music As a User’s Manual” which “Invites the audience to use it as a manual – the manual will offer several things that can be done: scream; meditate; and others” at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/29, 7 PM genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou and her band play her harrowing jazz suite Comfort Girl, about women forced into sexual slavery under the Japanese in WWII at Joe’s Pub, $15

3/29. 7 PM the Latin American Chamber Players perform works by Ravel, Boulanger, Francaix, Roussel and Poulenc at Scholes St. Studios, $20

3/29, 7 PM pianist Conor Hanick and Parallax Ensemble play works by Kati Agócs, Balázs Futó, Nicolas Namoradze; Robert Beaser and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade; and the U.S. premiere of Petrichor, a violin-piano duet based on J.S. Bach by Jocelyn Morlock at 1 Rivington St. upstairs, $15/$10 stud/srs

3/30. 8 PM composers and instrumentalists Daniel Fishkin, Cleek Schrey, and Ron Shalom — the U.S.’s only extant daxophone consort – at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs “The daxophone is a thin wooden strip played with a bow, created by the German improviser/inventor Hans Reichel in 1987. The instrument’s sound, somewhere between a cello and badger, ranges from furtive gurgles and delicate whistles to wild screams.”

3/30 catchy female-fronted powerpop band Big Eyes – who absolutely nail a late 70s/early 80s CBGB sensibility – play the album release show for their new one at Union Pool

4/4, 7:30 PM, repeating 4/5 at 8 PM and 4/6 at 2 and 8 PM the NY Philharmonic play works by Beethoven, Bernstein, Stucky ,Wagner and very young composers at Avery Fisher Hall, $5 tix available to NYPD, NYFD, EMT, and NYC city service professionals.

4/7, 5 PM the Kandinsky Trio perform a lyrical early Beethoven piano trio and then will be joined by clarinetist Jose Garcia Taborda and narrator Patricia Raun for Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance. Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of south-of-the-border-style bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays in January and February, 8 PM the unpredictably fun, funny art-rock/psychedelic soul band the Academy Blues Project at Shrine

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays in January Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg, two sets starting at 10:30 PM. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests.

Tuesdays in January clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at 9 PM at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Thursdays at 8:30 in January the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays in February, 6 PM charmingly inscrutable Parisienne jazz chanteuse Chloe & the French Heart Jazz Band at Club Bonafide, $20. They’re also there on 2/24 at 5:30 PM

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM in January at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

1/3, 7:30 the booking agents’ convention is in town and there are some phenomenal, cheap lineups around town. Tonight at Drom there’s a free show with intense, rapturous Balkan/Middle Eastern ensemble the Secret Trio –Tamer Pinarbasi, Ismail Lumanovski & Ara Dinkjian – followed at 8:30 by brooding Greek crooner Pericles Kanaris and at 10:00 by chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia playing edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences

1/4-6 and 1/10-12, 10 PM (except for 1/6 at 8 PM) singer/dancer Nora Chipaumire “reckons with the production and consumption of pop sound and imagery in the hyper-reality of global capitalism, resurrecting the era of drum magazines, African broadcast stations, color bars, and a people with active connections to rural and township lifestyles playing all-night parties at underground apartheid-era South African speakeasies” at Jack, $25

1/6, 4 PM a launch event for the new Philip Glass Institute at the New School including a performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble, a panel discussion including the composer and a performance of an excerpt from Lisa Bielawa’s in-progress, made-for-TV opera, Vireo, at the New School ground floor auditorium at 63 5th Ave, free

1/7, 7:30 PM pyrotechnic klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, Kathleen Tagg and the Omer Quartet play works by Prokofiev, Debussy, Golijov, John Zorn and Kinan Azmeh at Music Mondays, Advent Church, northwest corner of 93rd and Broadway, free

1/7, 9 PM slashing guitarist Steve Antonakos plays slide guitar blues with his band at Bar Chord. He’s also at the Parkside on the 19th at 8

1/7, 10 PM tuneful, state-of-the-art postbop jazz guitarist Will Bernard and group followed eventually at midnight by awesome, creepy Texas psychedelic band Acid Carousel at the small room at the Rockwood

1/9, 7 PM celebrating the centenary of politically fearless sound collage pioneer Ake Hodell, a rare public performance of the original quadraphonic versions of three of Hodell’s most revered text-sound compositions – on the disappearance of Black Panther members, apartheid in Rhodesia and a JG Ballard-esque history of the 20th century through the prism of automobiles – plus Fia Backström reads from her new translations of Hodell’s writing, at the Emily Harvey Foundation, 537 Broadway #2 (Spring/Prince), $10

1/9,7 PM Nublu honcho and psychedelic postbop tenor saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin wears many hats throughout the night, which starts with Nublu Orchestra doing a tribute to their late great conductor/leader Butch Morris; at 8:30 longtime Gil Scott-Heron collaborator and electric pianist Brian Jackson; at 10 Silver with Ersahin, Eddie Henderson, Juini Booth, Kenny Wollesen playing the album release show for their new one and at 1 AM Ersahin’s Oceanvs Orientalis at Nublu 151, $tba

1/11, 8 PM a screening of the fascinating documentary Milford Graves Full Mantis, exploring the work of the polymath jazz drummer/music historian/cardiac music visionary, plus a drum duel between Susie Ibarra and Brian Chase at the Fridman Gallery,​ 169 Broadway, $20/$15 stud

1/11, 8 PM irrepressibly fun blues/swing harmony pals Mamie Minch and Tamar Korn; followed by Hawaiian guitar group King Isto’s Tropical String Band playing the album release show for their new one at the Jalopy, $10

1/11, 8 PM genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou Stephanie Chou and band play her new suite Comfort Girl, focusing on women forced into sexual slavery in Asia during World War II at the Cell Theatre, $20

1/12, 3 and 5 PM the new electroacoustic, gospel-inspired opera Stinney: An American Execution, examining the ugly background behind the murder of 14-year-old South Carolina black teenager, framed and executed in 1944 for a crime he didn’t commit, at the French Institute, 55 E 59th St., $30

1/12, 6 PM eclectic, edgy soul/art-rock/funk/chamber-pop cellist/singer Marika Hughes followed at 8 by surreal, intense klezmer/oldtime gospel guy/girl duo Book of J and at 10 byPangari & the Socialites playing classic ska and rocksteady – most of it from the 60s Skatalites catalog – at Barbes

1/12, 8 PM Victor Jara-influenced songwriter Fred Arcoleo followed by south Williamsburg oi punk band the Infiltrators at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

1/13, 3 PM indie classical ensemble Sandbox Percussion play a program TBA at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, Park Slope, any train to Grand Army Plz, sugg don

1/13, 7 PM smart, darkly pensive third-stream jazz pianist Noa Fort at the small room at the Rockwood. Intense female-fronted psychedelic groove/funk band Imunuri are next door at the big room, same time

1/14, 7 PM “a double bill of two genre-defying drummers performing their newest work. Shayna Dunkelman performs a rare solo set weaving electronic sounds with acoustic percussion. Still searching for a word to describe a live performance with acoustic percussion and electronics that isn’t like watching karaoke. It’s dope, so shut up and call/text/@ if you think of the word. Lia Braswell brings her new project, Mimi Was with Jared Samuel; a combination of improvised as well as composition: ethereal landscapes, intertwining soft grooves between a variety of dynamic and pedal-infused instrumentals to compliment the melodic power of theatrical lyricism, busting ass with class (and vice versa) at Arete Gallery, $15

1/18-19, starting at 6 PM it’s Golden Fest, the nation’s most ecstatically fun festival of minor keys, chromatics, eerie close harmonies and music from the Balkans to points further east and west. Not cheap, but a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet is included. At Grand Prospect Hall, 263 Prospect Ave in south Park Slope, R train to Prospect Ave.

1/20, 6:30PM a post Golden Fest Balkan blowout at the Jalopy with the Balkan-American stars of decades to come, Cocek Nation followed at 7 by dynamic, subtle all-female klezmer band Tsibele, at 8by the Romany-flavoed Sarma Brass Band and at 8 by the ferocious Novi HitoviBrass Band, $10, “nobody turned away,” proceeds to benefit Balkan music education

1/24, 8 PM Lea Bertucci and Amirtha Kidambi sing their new duo vocal project followed by the world premiere of Mass of Dissolution, Bertucci’s new work for percussion trio Tigue (Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody), “an incantation against the blind violence of military-industrial power that dominates global dynamics,” at the Kitchen, $25

1/26, 2:30 PM pianist Beth Levin performs works of Wang Jie, Vladimir N. Drozdoff,Beethoven and Handel at the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts, free

1/26, 4 PM “music, performances, and readings inspired by Wu-Tang Clan’s 1993 song “C.R.E.A.M” (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) with a lineup led by Sable Elyse Smith, including Jibade-Khalil Huffman and Simone White, Devin Kenny, and Bonita Oliver, as well as poetry readings by A. H. Jerriod Avant and Smith herself. “Works that dismantle and reimagine “C.R.E.A.M.” as a song and as a larger cultural moment. The contributors interrogate mass incarceration and shed light on the interrelationship between the prison-industrial complex and high finance, violence, intimacy, and trauma, to pursue what exists beyond those broken narratives,” free w/rsvp

1/26, 6 PM eclectic, edgy soul/art-rock/funk/chamber-pop cellist/singer Marika Hughes followed at 8 by the Dirty Waltz Band- a seven-piece group playing more than a dozen instruments in 3/4 time from Balkan, Irish, jazz, blues and American folk traditions – and then at 10 by the haphazardly funny Eastern Blokhedz – who do psychedelic covers of 60s Russian psychedelic pop songs and specialize in the catalog of legendary Polish singer Edita Piaha –at Barbes

1/26, 8 PM the Orlando Consort, Joined by bass Robert Macdonald,sing works by Josquin des Prez, Clemens non Papa, Nicolas Gombert and others, concluding with Lamentations by English Tudor composer Robert White at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 W 46th St, $30 tix avail

1/29, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6, indie classical chamber group Either/Or play works by their leader Richard Carrick at the Miller Theatre, free

1/29, 6:30 PM “In her new film Pellea[s], Josephine Meckseper adapts Maurice Maeterlinck’s otherworldly play Pelléas et Mélisande for our current sociopolitical landscape, weaving together fictional scenarios and dramatic footage captured from the last Presidential inauguration, as well as from the landmark women’s march that followed. Conflating contemporary political realities with a timeless love story, the city of Washington D.C. and its architecture become a context and site of departure, giving voice to debates around notions of gender found in the original play. Underscoring the film is Arnold Schoenberg’s modernist version of Pelléas et Mélisande,” at the Kitchen, free

2/2, 7:30 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play a Chinese New Year celebration at NJPAC in Newark with Beethoven’s Festival Overture, works by Tan Dun and Li Huanzhi and others, $20 tix avail

2/2, 8 PM left coast postbop pianist Richard Sears with his trio followed by torchy singer Jennifer Charles’ and guitar mastermind Oren Bloedow’s haunting, fearlessly political art-rock/noir band Elysian Fields on their home turf at the Owl, $10